


The Book of Ruth

by frnklymrshnkly



Category: Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Genre: Camping, Everybody lives!, F/F, Getting Together, Homophobia, Honey, Instant Coffee, Internalised Homophobia, Misogyny, Nostalgia, Pining, RST (offscreen), Resolved Sexual Tension (offscreen), Road Trip, Ruth Jamison is brave af, Ruth’s POV, Sandwiches, UST, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wonderbread, bee charming, caper, casual grand theft auto (borrowing Julian’s car without asking), co-habitation, fade to black sex scene, full-frontal feelings, getting sick of pining, hand wringing, jailbirds, learning to drive out of spite, public sex (off screen), public spectacles, shambolic hair, splashing around in a stream, terrible driving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 20:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16981215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frnklymrshnkly/pseuds/frnklymrshnkly
Summary: Ruth Jamison is the bravest person Idgie ever knew. Find out why as she takes on adverse camping conditions, a standard transmission, sexist and homophobic goofs, the fuzz, and her greatest adversary: Idgie’s bravado.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greyathena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyathena/gifts).



> Dear **greyathena** , when I received this assignment and saw that you were looking for non-smut-heavy Everybody Lives! I was dancing with excitement. I want to thank you for your request, because it gave me an opportunity to explore several aspects of canon that have always endeared me: 1) Idgie calling Ruth the bravest person she ever knew; 2) Idgie’s extreme bravado and the feelings it conceals; 3) the feels behind behind Ruth kissing Idgie on the cheek and testifying that she loves her; and 4) (and this, I confess, is from the novel) a hint that Idgie harbours some internalized homophobia. So here this is. All my gratitude to you for giving me the impetus to have my say on Ruth and Idgie. I hope it gives you a smile or two. <3
> 
> Huge, massive, colossal thanks to my alpha and beta readers, who deserve some non-gross/classist version of knighthoods or something.

The first Sunday after she’s acquitted of Frank Bennett’s murder, Idgie, breaks Ruth’s promise to the Reverend Scroggins and dodges church.

“I thought Aunt Idgie was coming today,” Buddy remarks, disappointment written all over his face. 

“She must have had other plans.” Ruth works to keep her own frustration at bay. She’s not surprised, really. But she can’t help being a mite disheartened anyhow.

“But Jake said that his mama heard from Scroggin’s sister that—"

“Buddy Threadgoode Junior, are you becoming a gossip?”

“No, ma’am,” Buddy denies quickly, eyes cast toward the floor.

“You better not be. I didn’t raise you to gossip.”

“No, ma’am,” he repeats in agreement.

“And it’s Reverend Scroggins to you, mister.”

“But Aunt Idgie—”

“You ain’t Aunt Idgie.”

“No ma’am,” he agrees, adequately chided. 

“Well, that’s alright then.” Ruth ruffles Buddy’s hair warmly, playfully, to let him know that he’s not in any real trouble, despite the scolding. She knows that he feels contrite about telling tales, even if he probably does think Idgie’s the cat’s pajamas for dropping the Reverend’s title without a care. As long as he thinks twice about gossiping, Ruth will be happy. And she thinks he will; they’ve been raising him right, she and Idgie, even if Idgie could be demonstrating a bit more respect for one’s elders.

After a moment, Buddy looks back up from the floor to Ruth’s face, flashing her a sheepish smile.

“So, are you going to escort your mama to church, then, mister?”

Buddy holds a crooked elbow out and up for her, and Ruth bends a bit to one side and links her own in it, letting Buddy lead the way.

* * *

A month of Sundays pass that way, only without Buddy’s dressing down. Things are much as they ever were, most of the week. Buddy takes off first thing in the morning to play with his friends, only showing his face when he wants feeding or attention from Idgie, or George, or sometimes (though with less and less frequency as he gets older) Ruth herself. 

Ruth and Idgie work all day at the diner. Idgie mostly serves customers and works the counter, while Ruth cooks, popping out occasionally to look in on things, ring someone up, or shoot the breeze for a minute with the diners. On many evenings, Idgie continues Ruth’s “lessons” in how to spot bluffing, tells, and all manner of other tricks necessary for a card sharp. Ruth, who’s never bet a dime in her life—she and Idgie play for fun (and, occasionally, if Ruth’s had a whiskey, for who’ll give Buddy talking-to the next time he goofs off)—has no need for these tricks. In fact, considering Ruth has been able to see right through Idgie Threadgoode since she was a teenager and she doesn’t play cards with anyone else, she couldn’t need the “lessons” less. But all the same, Ruth can’t help but cherish the evenings with Idgie, whether they are playing cards, having supper with Sipsy and George, putting a fresh lick of paint on some room (after Mama Threadgoode died, Ruth and Buddy moved into the big house with Idgie, where Idgie became a proper inside-dweller again. Even when they’re just having a chinwag or Idgie’s telling tall-tales that Ruth has heard a hundred times, Ruth can’t get enough.

 

But as many evenings as Idgie stays in, playing devout aunty and bosom chum, she’s out, down around the River Club, Ruth guesses, getting lit with Gladys, and losing money to the boys, and meeting Grady’s advances with insulting rejections. Ruth guesses that’s what Idgie’s up to, anyhow—same old same old. But Idgie doesn’t talk much to Ruth about her comings and goings. She hates, Ruth knows, to have anyone keeping tabs on her, to feel at all tied down. 

Idgie once told Ruth that she’s as settled as she ever hoped to be; at the time, that had filled Ruth’s heart to overflowing. But as the years have ticked by since that night in the café, Ruth thinks more and more that _she_ is the one who isn’t as settled as she’d like to be. 

It’s not that she wants to be some ball and chain. She doesn’t expect Idgie to take up singing in the Church choir. But coming along once in a while because it would mean something to Ruth, that’d be something. Inviting Ruth to come along sometimes when she takes off to the River Club, or wherever, wouldn’t hurt. 

Ruth doesn’t want Idgie to think she’s a nag, so Saturday nights before she turns in, Ruth asks Idgie, lightly, voice aiming for pleasant curiosity, if she’ll be coming to church the next morning. Idgie usually laughs and makes some joke about how rotten church is and what a bunch of hypocrites half the Whistle Stop church-going crowd are. At first, Ruth smiles her pinched smile, unamused.

After another month, though, Idgie’s refusal ever to come along on Sunday starts to grate on Ruth.

“You’re breaking your promise to the Reverend, I hope you realize,” Ruth bemoans one Saturday—well, it’s Sunday morning at this point—after Idgie pores herself through the door. 

Idgie laughs—or scoffs. Ruth thinks it’s more of a scoff. “Weren’t my promise. Anyway, what are you doing up this late when you’ve got the children tomorrow morning?” Idgie asks in a transparent attempt at avoiding the topic.

“Waiting.” Ruth doesn’t say, ‘for you,’ because it’s just about as plain as day and because Idgie doesn’t like to be waited up for.

“There ain’t no call for that. I can take care of myself—"

“I know,” Ruth interrupts, cutting off any tipsy tangent about what a master of self-preservation Twanda is.

“I suppose I will turn in,” Ruth says, and begins up the wooden staircase to the room that used to be Mama Threadgoode’s. The wallpaper has a magnolia pattern that Ruth had favored over the sun-worn blue of Cleo’s old room. Magnolias attract bees, her mother’d taught her as she pruned her prized bushes.

Idgie doesn’t call out for Ruth to stop, to come back. She doesn’t say she’s sorry for keeping Ruth up, or for breaking Ruth’s promises to the local preacher. 

Ruth goes to bed, alone. And in the morning, Idgie’s scarpered before Ruth and Buddy are up and at ‘em again.

* * *

After that night, Ruth stops asking Idgie if she’s coming to church or not, and, gradually, Idgie stops making herself scarce every Sunday morning. Sure, sometimes she’s gone, because, Ruth thinks, she’s got to keep up that aura of wildness and mystery. But just as often she’s burning bacon and insisting that it’s fine, sending Ruth and Buddy off to church with nothing but toast for breakfast, because, though _she_ insists she likes bacon a bit charred, _they_ insist she’s nuts.

It’s not so much that Ruth had expected things to change between her and Idgie after the trial. When she said what she said on the witness stand, she had no grand plan in mind. She hadn’t been scheming, just speaking her heart’s own truth.

But in the days that followed, after the glee of Idgie and George’s dodged bullet wore off, Ruth reflected on what she’d said and how much she meant it. 

Idgie is as much a parent to Buddy as Ruth is; they share a house, and friends, and the Whistle Stop. And yet… Ruth feels a bit guilty for not being happy with things as they are. But with Frank out of the picture for good and certain, with her and Idgie working and living together… 

Ruth doesn’t _know_ what the rest of the town thinks. But she can guess. Most of them probably think the square root of nothing about it. People don’t generally think, Ruth has noticed, much about what women might want—unless it affects a man. 

A few, though—the clever ones, the town agony aunts, like Sipsy and Gladys—well, Ruth thinks they probably _think_ they know what’s what in the Theadgoode house.

If that’s so, they’re just as wrong as the people who don’t give Idgie and her a second thought, and isn’t that just the most hilarious thought of them all.

* * *

One evening in July—it’s still light out—Ruth’s sweeping up for the porch of the Whistle Stop after seeing the last customer out. Once the last customers had cleared out, Idgie had tossed her apron on a table, said she’d be back, and left.

While she sweeps, Ruth thinks about next Sunday—about the lesson she’ll be teaching the children, about the best ways to keep the them interested and attentive to the passages. She doesn’t realize she’s stopped sweeping, that she’s just leaning on the broom like a fool, until a loud ‘ _Honk_!’ makes her jump. 

As Ruth is turning around to get the lay of the land, she hears Idgie’s voice, full of mischief, call, “You getting in, or ain’t you?”

Idgie grinds to a too-quick stop, brakes squealing and dust flying. As soon as Julian’s car stops moving, Idgie stands up from her seat, one arm still on the steering wheel. 

Ruth drops her chin and raises her eyebrows at Idgie, giving her a look of mock disdain. 

“Well?” Idgie presses.

“That depends. Where’re we going?” Ruth counters.

“Ah, that would spoil all the fun,” Idgie insists. “Come on, ain’t you got no sense of adventure?”

“Course I do. Don’t mean I go riding around in cars with scoundrels, though.” Ruth’s tone is playful, but she does wish Idgie would just tell her where she wants to take them. Because, really, Ruth likes calling on Gladys at the Riverclub once in a blue moon, and playing baseball in the dark, and swimming in lakes at midnight. And She’d like, for a change, to be in on it, part of the adventure rather than along for the ride. 

“Who you calling a scoundrel?” Idgie says without hardness.

“Julian knows you have his car, then, does he?”

“Not as such,” Idgie confesses. “But he don’t need it.”

“Told you that, did he?” Ruth chuckles.

“Something like that,” Idgie hedges.

Ruth looks to the sky as though it can supply her with patience.

Idgie plops down in her seat and the car drops down for an instant before springing right back up again. After bouncing along like some kind of cartoon character, Idgie crosses her arms over her chest. “I can wait all night, you know. Just you see if I can’t.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, you stubborn mule.”

Idgie cocks her head. “First scoundrel now mule; what must you think of me, Ruth Jamison?”

Hearing Idgie speak her name— _her_ name—is like a siren’s song. She knows she oughtn’t to hate anything, but Ruth detests being called Mrs. Bennet.

So Ruth sets the broom by the door, locks up, and climbs down the stoop. When she gets into the car, Idgie throws one arm around Ruth’s shoulders excitedly, clearly gratified to have gotten her way, to be whisking them both off into the dusk. Ruth lets herself be pulled in; it’s not hard. It’s the easiest thing in the world, because she’s pleased as punch to have Idgie’s arm around her, taking her somewhere—anywhere. 

Instead of telling Idgie that, Ruth turns a cheeky smirk on her and says, “Same as Grady thinks: you’re a bad influence.”

* * *

For a while, Idgie cruises down country roads, fields on either side of them sprawling and receding into the woods in the distance. It’s quiet, but not unpleasantly so. Even though Idgie can be a live wire when the mood takes her, she’s equally capable of being as tacit as a sphinx. Moments like these, when they are side by side, just enjoying each others’ company, Ruth wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. 

 

It’s those silences that make her feel left out, that rankle.

After perhaps an hour of quiet driving, Ruth finally asks Idgie, “You’re really not going to tell me where we’re headed, are you?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Idgie stares straight ahead on the street, but her mouth twitches a bit.

 

“Course you weren’t,” Ruth answers, and even though she knows she should take a higher road, shake it off, hold her peace, she can’t be bothered to keep the sharp edge from her tongue.

“Why d’you want to be like that, spoilsport?” Idgie teases.

“It’s going to get dark soon. Buddy’ll be needing supper—“

“Don’t worry about that; Sipsy’s minding Stump.” 

That reassures Ruth some; there’s no one in Whistle Stop Ruth respects and trusts more than Sipsy, and the woman has never met the child she couldn’t make mind her. Buddy’s face fills Ruth’s mind, happy, always to have Sipsy’s or George’s attention. “Sipsy’s so good with that boy, following George home like he does,” Ruth thinks out loud, and then falls silent, awash in a wave of shame for failing to be contented with her life exactly as it is. Since she left Valdosta her days have been filled with love and kindness from Idgie, from Sipsy, from George, from Mama Threadgoode before she’d died, from the folks who wander into and out of the dinner day after day. But there doesn’t seem to be any use trying to force herself to be more happy than she is. She’s been trying since the trial. But after saying what she did on the stand, it’s become an impossible job. She doesn’t say any of this. She just says, “I swear, George dotes on that boy even more than he did on you, and that’s saying something.”

“He never!” Idgie rebuts, but she laughs. “He does dote on Stump though, and that’s no lie.”

Ruth reflexively turns and looks back at the road along which they’ve come. Of course, they’ve twisted and turned with the winding country road; she knows she’s not really looking back directly towards Whistle Stop, towards Buddy. But she still stares a while. Eventually, something she’s been looking past in the back-seat registers. 

“Idgie?“ Ruth starts in a long-suffering, exasperated timbre, but before she can go on, Idgie turns onto a dirt road. “I suppose you’ll let me know when it’s the right time to let me in on your game, huh?” Ruth asks.

“Yup,” Idgie says, smacking her lips on the p with a flourish. 

Ruth groans inwardly. “Couldn’t just give me a straight answer.”

“Where’d be the fun in that?”

“It’d be fun for me,” Ruth says. 

Ruth can tell by Idgie’s tone and the expression on her face as she squints into the setting sun, eyes on the road, that she’s trying hard to keep things light, to keep a spirit of mystery and mischief-making alive. Of course, her trying only proves she knows that Ruth is chafing at the secrecy. But she’s trying to make Ruth happy the best way—the only way—she knows how: whisk her away. 

“Then, I’m sorry to inform you that I suspect I see some tent poles poking out from under the tarp in the back. And I may never have been a Scout, but I believe I can spot a camp grill-stove as well as anyone.”

“Well,” Idgie says, resigned that the jig is up, and yet keeping up her tone playful, “we’ve got ourselves a mistress of deduction on our hands.” Her eyes flit for a moment from the road to Ruth, and she grins. 

“Idgie! What about Buddy? What about the café? What about— about critters and varmints!?”

“I told you: Buddy’s as happy as a pig in mud to be with Sipsy and George, who’ll also mind the café a treat for a day or two. And Twanda can take all comers in the critters and varmints department.” Idgie takes her arm back from around Ruth’s shoulders and crosses her heart.

Ruth flops against the back of the seat. “You could have asked if I wanted to—“

“Come on, Ruth. It’d be fun to get away for a day or two. I like going for a drive sometimes.”

“Oh.” Ruth doesn’t quite know what else to say, because it sounds like they might be going driving through some of Idgie’s laughing places—places she takes off to when Ruth goes to Church, or to a revival, or is just working around the big house waiting to hear Idgie’s footsteps in the dark outside on a Saturday night. 

“Do you—“ Idgie stalls, uncertain. She turns to face Ruth for a moment, eyes completely off the road. “You do want to come, don’t you?”

“Course I do,” Ruth answers honestly. “But if you don’t watch the road, we’re unlikely to get there.”

Idgie looks pleased as she turns back to the road, like she has the answers to all of life’s problems.

“Good, then.” 

“Well, good,” Ruth agrees.

* * *

It’s twilight when Idgie finally pulls the car over. They’re still on a dirt road, and maroon dust rises into the air as the car comes to halt on the shoulder at the edge of a wood.

Idgie hops out, up, and over the car door. From outside, she reaches into the back and grabs the tent, tarp and all, revealing a pot and a few odds and ends that were tucked under the tarp. Idgie jams her load under her shoulder.

“Grab the grill, would you? And that pot?” she asks Ruth, who reaches around, obliging, before getting out herself. “And there’s some food on the floor. Bring that too.”

Idgie walks in among the trees, and Ruth follows along. Ruth may not care for snakes, bears and the like, but it’s been honest to goodness years since Idgie took her on one of her capers, since before Buddy came along, and she’d be a class-A fool if she turned up her nose at the very thing she’s been pining for.

“How far in are we going?” Ruth asks.

“Far enough not to be seen from the road. We can stop soon as we find a spot to pitch the tent.”

“I hope you know how to pitch that thing,” Ruth calls ahead to Idgie, who’s a short way ahead of her.

“Course I do!”

They don’t walk too long. There’s no real point in heading in too deep. The car is at the side of the road, but they can get back to it early. 

“This’ll do just fine,” Idgie declares, seemingly at random. She drops the tent and tarp together on the ground and stretches her arms backwards a bit, arching her back and bending her neck from side to side after the drive. “Can you scrounge up some sticks for a bit of a fire while I get this set up?” She kicks out lightly toward the jumble of tent pieces on the ground.

“Course.” Ruth nods and sets about filling her arms with spindly pieces of fallen, broken branches. 

After Ruth’s got a sizable pile of kindling, she searches for some larger pieces to keep a larger fire going. The sounds of Idgie cursing the tent as she wages war with its poles reverberated around the clearing.

“Don’t suppose you need help with that?” Ruth asks.

“I’ve got it.”

Ruth snickers and gets down to the business of making a fire. There’re matches taped to the side of the iron grill, and she lights some small twigs in a spot she’s cleared of all foliage and rocks. Smoke begins to rise as the flames spread, catching the kindling with ease and making slower work of the larger pieces.

Before it gets too hot and high, Ruth places the grill over top of her pile of smoldering wood. “Don’t suppose there’s some water around here?”

“Twanda!” Idgie crows in triumph. 

Ruth looks over to Idgie and the tent. Idgie’s made a pig’s ear of the job; it’s lopsided and she clearly forewent the process of matching the poles up to the correct parts of the canvas. Instead, it appears to Ruth, Idgie settled for cramming four poles into the ground and draping the canvas overtop. 

“Look at you! Fire going and all. Didn’t know you could make a campfire.”

“I make them all the time during the summer revivals. The children love playing ‘I hate white rabbits’ and scorching marshmallows and weiners.”

Idgie doesn’t respond to that, just heads Ruth’s way to snatch up the pot. “There’s a stream runs through this wood. Not far. I’ll get a bit of water to boil. Did you get the food from the car?”

“I did,” Ruth affirms. But her tone betrays her nerves about being left in the clearing alone.

“Tell you what,” Idgie says, coming to stand behind Ruth and putting a hand on each of her shoulders so she can speak into her ear. Ruth forgets all about critters and varmints as Idgie’s breath on her ear that leaves her spine tingling from neck to tailbone. “You see a possum, you just yell, 'Twanda!’ and I’ll come running.”

* * *

As it turns out, Ruth doesn’t see much more than a dickey bird while Idgie fetches water. While Idgie’s gone, Ruth paces around the clearing, restless, trying to clear away the unspent adrenaline Idgie breathed into her.

“Most critters are more scared of us than we are of them. Just take it easy, and most of them will steer clear,” Idgie informs Ruth when she’s returned and they sit together on the spongy ground near the fire sipping instant coffees from tin mugs. 

There’s a tin of beans heating in a pot atop the grill, now clear of the water they’d boiled for coffee. 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Thank you.” Ruth blows on her coffee to cool it, and Idgie pulls a small, half-full bottle of whiskey from her shorts’ pocket and tips a measure into her mug before reaching across to do the same for Ruth. 

In spite of her claim, so many years before, that she never drinks, Ruth enjoys a sociable dram of whiskey here and there.

“Thank you,” she says, and tips her mug to Idgie, who tips hers back. 

With the fire a good temperature already, the beans and tomato sauce hardly take a moment to start bubbling.

Without forks or spoons, some slices of Wonderbread serve to scoop up the beans and sop up their sauce. It’s hardly gourmet, but Ruth doesn’t mind keeping it simple. She generally cooks from scratch seven days a week for most of Whistle Stop, so beans, bread, and coffee are gratifying in their own way. And besides all that, the simple tin of beans reminds her of another night she spent with Idgie so long ago—a lifetime, it feels like—before she’d married Frank (or left his no-good ass) and her mother had died and Idgie’s had followed. Before Buddy and the café came along. Back when all she’d wanted in the world was to keep holding Idgie’s attention long enough to bring her home and keep her there, and not just, she’d realized once she left Idgie behind for black eyes in Valdosta, for Mama Threadgoode neither.

“You come here before?” Ruth asks, after she swallows a bite of bread and beans. 

“Not right here.” Idgie takes a swig of coffee. “But I’ve been around, near enough. You’re not still worried about critters, are you?” 

“Not really,” Ruth denies. “Just wondering if this is a place you come.”

“We’ll eat up all the beans and bread and rinse the pot. Doubt many critters will be interested in a tin of coffee,” Idgie deflects. To be fair, it hadn’t exactly been a question. Still, Ruth knows that Idgie knows that she was trying for a gentle probe. “I’ll go back down to the stream before we turn in, rinse the pot, and grab some more water for the morning.”

“It’s pitch black—how on earth are you going to find your way there and back?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Once they’re both filled with warm food and drink, Idgie gets up to deal with the pot and collect water. Although an extra set of eyes is really no good when it’s pitch black, the ground is uneven, and there are trees and bushes are everywhere, Ruth insists on joining her. “In case anything goes wrong. I don’t want to be separated.”

“You best come on then,” Idgie says with her trademark Alabama sass. She offers Ruth her free hand—the one not holding the pot. Ruth accepts, twining their fingers together as Idgie pulls her to her feet. 

Together they stumble through the woods. Ruth feels jittery and giddy from nerves and whiskey and the coffee and Idgie’s hand in hers and she lets Idgie lead them along, tripping here and there. Ruth laughs nervously as they crash through unseen bushes and scare off wildlife. 

Idgie asks, “What’s so funny?” but seems to catch Ruth’s laughter, and they shush each other pointlessly, snorting even more loudly each time the other calls for quiet.

When they get back to their clearing the fire is but embers and they crawl into the sad excuse for a tent. Idgie lets go of Ruth’s hand and lies down, putting her arms behind her head and closing her eyes.

Ruth lies down beside her. Her hand, still warm from where Idgie’s held it, is beginning to cool. Her heart is still racing when Idgie begins to snore, her mind distracted as she wonders how Idgie can possibly sleep right now

 

* * *

The fringe benefit to Idgie’s woeful tent set up, it turns out, is that it’s a breeze to take back down. Ruth, who’d only managed a couple of hours of broken sleep the night before, assailed as she was by the warm feeling that Idgie’s hand had left on hers, got a fire going when the sun started to come up. She shakes small heaps of instant coffee into each mug and pours water over top of each in turn slowly, swirling the mugs as she does because they haven’t got anything to stir with.

The smell of coffee wakes Idgie, who yawns loudly and calls, “Smells good,” from the tent, promptly hopping up to come and claim her ration as though she hadn’t just slept a night on the hard ground.

Ruth gets the fire out, and after a hasty drink, Idgie whisks the canvas off of the poles like a magician pulling a curtain away. One of the poles falls over pathetically. “It’s all in the wrist,” she jokes before scrunching up the canvas and snatching up the fallen pole, along with the other three from where they are still clinging feebly to the ground. 

“Hold these for a minute?” she asks Ruth. Using the canvas to cover her hands, Idgie grabs the still-hot grill.

Just like that, they are back in the car, leaving no visible traces of their night in the rough but some footprints, a pile of ash, and four shallow holes in the ground.

* * *

In the car, Idgie keeps driving them in the direction they’d been headed when they pulled over the night before. 

“We’re not going back to Whistle Stop?” 

“Not yet,” Idgie says.

“But—“

“Stump’s fine, Ruth. The café is fine. We’ve hardly had a day off between us since we opened the place.”

It’s not entirely true. Ruth leaves for a few days every summer when the Reverend Scroggins has his annual revival, and they’d had to close the dinner temporarily when George and Idgie were on trial and Ruth had been called to testify. But the sentiment rings true: they both work their hands to the bone. But then again, they both love the café, being there together, with Sipsy and George and their favorite regulars, in a place of their own making. Of course, to Ruth it’s always felt more Idgie’s than hers, even though she and Sipsy came up with the menu. The start up money had come from Idgie’s father, after all, and no matter how hard Ruth works, it’s always felt like Idgie is there out of a sense of obligation to provide for the woman and kid she took out of Georgia. 

At Idgie and George’s trial, the state prosecutor had called Idgie Ruth’s business partner, but Ruth often feels more like a third wheel, which is saying something, considering it’s just the two of them. Well, and Buddy.

“But Buddy—“

“Ruth, Stump’ll be just fine, I swear. He always minds Sipsy and George. And besides, it’ll be good for him to have some time around another fella. With only us, I wonder…” Idgie trails off.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with us,” Ruth says resolutely.

Idgie keeps on driving.

After a few turns, they’re back on the main road for a while, but before long they are off on some other dusty road that seems to lead nowhere but through the trees on either side.

“Not long now,” Idgie informs Ruth.

Ruth has no sense of what direction they are headed. For all she knows they could have looped around and they’re on the opposite side of Whistle Stop from the one they’d left.

Ruth feels a little uneasy, but it’s not because she doesn’t know where she is.

Idgie pulls into a graveled clearing. Trees line the circular perimeter, and Ruth can see an outhouse and a couple of footpaths leading away from the clearing. 

Once the car is stopped, Idgie lunges over the back of her seat and grabs a couple of glass jars that have been rattling around. Two clutched in one hand, she hops out of the car, like she always does, over the door. 

Ruth opens hers, steps out, and shuts it behind her.

“This way,” Idgie calls over her shoulder, and punctuates the direction with a beckoning sweep of her arm. “Hate to be a one trick pony, but it feels like rain.”

“What trick? And what about rain?” Ruth asks, following Idgie, stepping over roots and small plants that are growing rebelliously on the well-trodden dirt path between the trees. She’d like to reach out and take Idgie’s hand again, like the night before, but Idgie’s hands are full of glass, and without the darkness as an excuse, she’s not sure Idgie would care for that.

They walk a ways. Idgie is apparently on the hunt for something. As they march on, the only sounds are twigs snapping under foot and Ruth commenting on fine quality of the fresh air. Finally, Idgie seems to perk up. She stops for a moment. “You hear that?”

She steps off of the path and starts heading into the trees where they stand more thickly together. 

Ruth follows close behind her, and after only a few steps, she can hear it—the sound that Idgie must have been listening for: a faint buzzing, growing louder.

Before long, Idgie stops, tells Ruth to wait where she is and not to worry this time, just to hold the jars and enjoy the dog and pony show.

 

Ruth holds her breath along with the jars. She watches Idgie take one easy step at a time towards a hive swarming with honey bees. Idgie is moving so cautiously, so carefully. Sudden panic sweeps through Ruth that a bear might show up, just as keen on honey as Idgie is. No point worrying about that now. When Idgie reaches her right hand slowly, slowly into an opening in the hive, and doesn’t scream or pull her arm out or run away, Ruth exhales in a bellowing rush.

 

Before she knows it, Idgie is pulling a robust comb of honey from the hive. Comb in hand, she reaches in again with another steady hand, dry and calloused, Ruth knows. And Ruth doesn’t know whether she wants to cry out, or stamp her feet impatiently, or just faint. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because she’s not going to allow herself any of those temporary comforts; none of them would bode well for Idgie in her current position.

It feels like eons pass until Idgie pulls a second dripping comb from the hive. Rough hands full of smooth honey, she turns slowly and methodically back towards Ruth, returning one calculated step at a time. The bees are interested in her, swooping all around her, some landing for a few seconds in her hair or on her shoulders, but they aren’t stinging, and Idgie looks so smug Ruth can’t help but smile.

“Impressed with yourself, are you? You one-trick-pony.” Even to her own ears, Ruth sounds breathless.

“I never got two at once before. Hope the bees don’t mind.”

“Haven’t lost your touch, have you? You old bee charmer.” Ruth doesn’t even try to sound composed. What would be the point? She knows for a solid gold fact that as long as she lives, Idgie Threadgoode will never stop taking her breath away. 

Idgie puffs up from the praise, trying to look cool. “I’ll never be scared of a few bees.”

“Maybe not, but I hope you know that we can’t live on honey,” Ruth teases. Cued by the thought of food, Ruth’s stomach grumbles.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Idgie advises without actually offering any assurances. “Just hold out them jars, quick!”

Ruth obliges, and Idgie drops a comb into each one. Once settled in, honey floods the jars; each one is nearly three quarters full of sweet liquid gold.

“You can take them back to the car, can’t you?” Idgie asks. “I need to clear this up.” She begins licking and sucking her sticky fingers clean, preoccupying Ruth all the way back to the car.

Back in the car, Idgie seems keen to get back to the main road.

“Can’t have you starving away next to me.”

“We heading home then?” Ruth inquires, “For honey and peanut butter sandwiches?”

“Why’d we want to do a thing like that?” Idgie asks in faux serious tones. “We’re just getting started!” 

Ruth’s mother brought her up never to whine, so she doesn’t gripe about _stil_ being kept in the dark, much as she wants to.

To Ruth’s relief, once they are back on the main road, Idgie lets out a whoop, and tells her, “Not long now, and we’ll have ourselves a full lumberjack breakfast.” Ruth doesn’t know what lumberjacks eat, but in short order when they pull into a service station. If Ruth were in charge of finding outposts of rural society, she thinks they’d starve to death. As it is, Idgie seems to know the area well.

Idgie parks the car next to a pump, pleases herself vaulting over the driver’s side door, puts some gas in the tank, then tells Ruth she’ll be right back and heads in to pay up. At least, Ruth hopes so. Money is pretty tight—they give away a lot of food at the café when they don’t sell it for cost. But they aren’t in the business of letting their neighbors, not one of them, go hungry, and times are hard. But Idgie usually has a little cash on her for playing cards at the River Club. 

The good mood Ruth had been cultivating since their fireside coffee that morning dries up.

Idgie strolls out with a spring in her step, and Ruth figures she must have settled things alright with the proprietor. “Never say this old bee charmer ain’t good for nothing,” Idgie says, beaming. “One fresh jar of honey for a quarter tank, a loaf of bread, and a jar of crunchy Skippy.”

“Lumberjacks partial to peanut butter, huh?”

“Don’t know about that,” Idgie says, as though she hadn’t brought up lumberjacks in the first place. “But you are.”

A sprinkle of water seems to fall on Ruth’s dried-up mood. She smiles. “I am at that.”

And then the water isn’t just figurative; in the distance a sheet of lightning flares across the grey horizon and a low rumble of thunder follows a second or two later. Where they are, it’s only sprinkling.

“Better get ourselves somewhere before that catches up with us.”

In shuffle and a hop, Idgie’s back in her seat, turning on the engine, and driving them away to only she and God know where.

* * *

Their destination, to Ruth’s genuine surprise, turns out to be a roadside motel that looks like it went to seed in the last century.

But Ruth’s stomach is getting louder, the rain is picking up, and Julian’s car has no top.

Idgie pulls up under a slantways, wall-less roof that juts out, supported by a few sturdy poles, to one side of the building. Ruth, still holding one jar of honey, and desperately hungry, follows Idgie without fuss.

One after the other, they walk up to the front desk.

“I’d like a room for the night,” Idgie informs the tobacco-chewing clerk sitting behind the large desk. Paint is peeling from the walls, and the desk is covered in rings from glasses placed carelessly on the surface over the years. It could all use a fresh coat of paint. Ruth privately shudders at the idea of the Whistle Stop ever looking this uncared for.

The clerk stops masticating long enough to answer, “Just the two of you?” he asks.

Idgie’s eyes narrow in distaste. “That’s right.”

“What brings a couple of girls—”

“You want to rent us a room or not? Could use the business by the look of the parking lot,” Idgie observes hotly, gesturing to the empty lot outside the glass door with one thumb.

The clerk worries his lower lip in contemplation. Whatever business sense he has seems to win out over the urge to pry. “Just your luck, got a room with two singles free. That’ll be ten dollars.”

“How about five?” Idgie offers, reaching into a pocket, pulling out a crumpled bank note and slapping it down on the counter like it’s a once in a lifetime offer.

“Rate’s ten dollars, girls. Sorry.”

“We ain’t girls, and we only got five. And by the looks of it, you ain’t got any other bodies to fill that room. So why don’t we get on with it?”

The clerk spits a stream of dark brown liquid into a bucket on the floor behind the desk. 

Ruth is repulsed, but doesn’t show it. She plasters on her best, “Hi, Grady, what’ll it be, Grady? Bye Grady, come back now, Grady, don’t keep Idgie out too late playing poker, Grady,” smile, and adds, “We sure would appreciate it; don’t like our chances against the rain.”

“Well now, what what would my mama say if I let two such fine girls sleep rough in the rain? Since I’m feeling in a generous kind of a mood, you can have it for five, but only one night, you hear? And check out is at 10 am sharp.”

“That’ll be just fine, thank you,” Ruth accepts before Idgie can quibble with him over the time, or the number of nights. “And we’ll just borrow that, if you don’t mind.” As the clerk hands Idgie the room key, Ruth reaches over the desk and grabs a metal knife where it’s sitting with a matching fork next to the clerk’s hot lunch.

In the bedroom, Idgie flops down on one of the beds and kicks off her shoes. Ruth sits down at the dusty, two-chair table, and spreads fresh honey and processed peanut butter onto two slices of bread with her ill-gotten knife.

She cuts the whole thing in half and gestures to Idgie to take it, before making another for herself.

They munch quietly, and when they’ve eaten their sandwiches, crusts and all, Ruth makes two more. The honey really is delicious.

Ruth swallows her last bite and licks her lips, letting out a satisfied moan. “I feel like I could eat two more, but I have a feeling if I do I’ll regret it before long.”

Idgie smiles. “You have all the honey you want. I got it for you.”

Ruth’s cheeks suddenly feel warm. “I thought you got it for us?”

“Well…yeah, for us.”

“Like this trip and this room.”

The smile fades from Idgie’s face—she’s leery. 

“Right. It’s always for us. The two of us, and Stump.”

“I guess it’s good we got a room with two beds, then,” Ruth says. It’s clear from the look on Idgie’s face she has no idea where this is going. “Because you must be sick to death of sharing.”

“What in the sam hell are you talking about, beds?” Idgie demands, but with a falsely nonchalant chuckle. “Maybe you should get in one and take a nap until those sandwiches settle in. Marching on an empty stomach is enough to—“

“This isn’t about my stomach!” Ruth shouts, but promptly snaps her mouth shut, embarrassed. Her mama taught her never to raise her voice.

“Well, then what you are talking about?”

“Nothing.” Ruth’s mama had also taught her, albeit by example, that when her daddy didn’t know what he’d done wrong, she wasn’t about to tell him. He could just smarten up and figure it out for himself. If she’s honest with herself, Ruth knows that’s no way to deal with anything or anyone, nevermind someone you love. But she keeps her mouth shut and takes the one long step from the chair to the bed—the unoccupied one. She sits on the edge, pulls off her shoes, and lies down. “I think I will have that nap. I didn’t sleep too well in the woods.”

* * *

After a couple of hours, Ruth wakes up. Idgie has fallen asleep though. Ruth finds a Gideon Bible in the side table, and reads for a while, until Idgie stirs. Ruth hops in the bath, and Idgie takes her turn when she wakes. Wet hair air-drying, they play poker for a while, wagering the making of dinner. Idgie loses, and demands rematch after rematch. After they play themselves out, Idgie whips up four more sandwiches and runs the water from the bathroom sink until it’s hot as it’ll get and makes them both Irish coffee. “Black’ll have to do,” she says apologetically, handing Ruth her mug.

They sip their lukewarm drinks and switch to hearts, chattering over the tension from Ruth’s earlier outburst. It’s not the first time that Ruth has intimated that she’s in Idgie’s way. She’d told Idgie as much before the trial, and she’d meant it when she’d said she was willing to move on, to get out of Idgie’s hair. Idgie had only half risen to the occasion back then. Ruth would have loved, as she’d love now, for Idgie to tell her what she thinks about it all—about Ruth’s words, her sentiments. But instead Idgie just loses one match after another, talking like she’s winning all the while.

* * *

Next morning Ruth’s in the car with their remaining provisions and two cleaned tin mugs at five to ten. On her way out, she'd given the clerk back his knife, but not before she'd made sandwiches out of the remaining slices of bread and stuffed the whole lot of them back into the bread bag to keep the bread from going too stale. It’s not enough for long, and they really should eat some kind of vegetable soon, but it’ll do. Ruth loves honey.

Idgie struts out of the motel ten minutes later, calling, “Oh turn blue, I’m hardly late!” to the clerk as the door swings up behind her.

In a flash, she’s in the car. She’s not tired. She hadn’t even slept in. Idgie Threadgoode just gets her kicks out of being contrary. After Ruth headed out, Idgie stayed behind just long enough to check out late—to have the last word.

The rain has passed, and, in any event, the roof-top covering kept the car dry. They pull out of the motel parking lot, Idgie leading them heaven-knows-where.

Ruth asks where they are—if they’re even still in the state. 

Idgie says they are, and Ruth contents herself with the measure information that Idgie has shared.

For a while they chatter about how things must be going back home. About how Sipsy probably has the café running better than ever, how George is probably feeding up the customers to their hearts’ content, how Buddy is probably preening like king of duck island, having their undivided attention, without Idgie running riot around the place. 

Idgie starts talking about how Buddy’ll be old enough to learn to shoot next year. He’s been pestering her about it since one of his friends got an air rifle last Christmas. Ruth doesn’t think much of shooting, but Idgie insists. “That that’s what boys do, Ruth. They go out shooting and fishing and run around getting dirty and breaking things. Stump’ll get picked on if his friends think he’s some kind of wet hen.”

“Wet hen?” Ruth laughs.

“You know boys can be awful mean if one of them is too girly.” 

“That’s mean alright.” Ruth can’t deny that Idgie has a lifetime of practice getting by with the boys. “But I don’t know why you think being called a girl is so bad. Like that clerk back there.”

“You heard the way he said it, smug bastard,” Idgie says, as though that explains everything.

“But we are girls!”

“We ain’t, neither. We’re grown,” Idgie parries.

“Well, then you ought to stop acting like a rotten child,” Ruth says. And she immediately regrets it. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be said, especially not like this, in a spirit of anger as they argue about trivialities driving down the road. Except, Ruth thinks, they aren’t really trivialities, not to her. As much as Ruth wants it not to be the case, her feelings are hurt. They have been for a while, at least since the trial. But she can’t let Idgie bear the blame all on her own; it’s just not in Ruth’s nature.

“And that goes double for me,” she appends, “I mean, just look at me! Left my husband, convinced a reverend to perjure himself, living,” _sharing my life_ , she thinks, “with a woman almost ten years my junior who don’t even want to tell me where we’re driving to for days on end! You know what, Idgie Threadgoode?” This is why Ruth doesn’t usually let herself get mad; she can be such a hot head that it doesn’t help anything, just winds her up like a top.

“What?!” Idgie demands.

“You can just pull this car over right now, you understand? Right now. I mean it!”

“I thought you wanted me to take us home?” Idgie says, stubbornness fueled, in all likelihood, by incredulity at Ruth’s uncharacteristic outburst.

“Just pull over, right here.” Ruth points to the empty road ahead of them. They are the only car in sight.

Idgie finally acquiesces, maybe because she’s spoiling for a fight and it’s too hard to focus on the road, gesticulate, listen enough to take offense, and craft rebuttals all at once. 

Once she kills the engine, she shifts in her seat, turns to face Ruth. “Well?” she demands. “Are we having this out, or ain’t we?”

“No, we ain’t. Get out of the car.”

“What?”

“Get out of the car!” Ruth orders. “I’m taking your seat.”

“What?!” Idgie repeats, sounding more perplexed than ever.

“I’m taking your seat.” Ruth repeats. “I’m driving.” Ruth's mouth is set in a firm line.

Idgie just laughs at her. She laughs and laughs until she’s wheezing. “You should see your face. You look like Stump when he insists he’s big enough to play around in the quarry with the teenagers.” Idgie laughs some more, then catches her breath enough to try to placate Ruth. “Ruth, you can’t drive, you never learned how!”

“Don’t say never to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

“No, come on, you’re grinding the gears. You’ll strip them down to nothing doing that,” Idgie croaks out through laughter and reaches over to place her hand on Ruth’s and guide her through changing into the correct gear.

“I can do it myself,” Ruth insists, releasing her ironclad grip on the gear stick long enough to give Idgie’s encroaching hand a reproachful rap before grabbing it again and cranking on it so that it grinds audibly.

In the middle of the road, she stalls the car again.

It’s been going on like this for twenty or thirty minutes. They’ve made precious little progress down the road, because Ruth can’t seem to get the hang of switching from the clutch to the gas.

Idgie’s still laughing as the car stammers to a halt in the middle of the road.

“Good thing we’re the only ones around,” Idgie observes.

“Ain’t it,” Ruth agrees with a grumble. Her forehead is damp with perspiration and her hair is sticking to it. She makes a funny face, sticking her bottom lip out and blowing upward to try and dislodge the stuck-on hair, but it’s plastered down. “Perfect conditions for a lesson.”

“Why don’t you let me do it? I can teach you another time.”

“I’m going to do it now,” Ruth insists. “Can’t be that hard, once you get the hang of it. After all, you can do it.” Idgie glares at her. “It’s just taking me a minute to get the hang of things.”

“Right,” Idgie says.

Ruth blows a stream of air out through pursed lips and turns to look Idgie full in the face. Idgie looks like she’s trying not to laugh. The corners of her mouth are turned up, the rascal. Ruth turns back to face the still road in front of her, but it’s too late—she can just imagine how she looks to Idgie right now, how the pair of them look together, stuck still in the middle of the road. She bursts out laughing.

And then Idgie is laughing along with her. Before long she’s squirming in the passenger seat, and Ruth is pounding her fist on the steering wheel as though it might give her purchase on a breath; she’s laughing so hard it hurts.

They howl. They cackle. They wheeze. They clutch at their aching sides. When they finally blow themselves out of steam, they sit, side by side, slouching like wilted flowers in their seats. 

“Hooo,” Idgie says, wiping tears from her cheeks with her palms. “Okay.” She slaps her wet palms down on her knees. “Hop out and I’ll get us going.”

“Uh-uh,” Ruth declines. “The only way I am leaving this spot is behind the wheel, you understand? So you’d better just tell me what to do to get this car going and keep it like that.”

“And just what do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past half hour?” Idgie jokes.

“Was that supposed to be teaching?” Ruth teases. “Good thing you’ve got no interest in the Sunday school—those children wouldn’t learn a thing.”

Idgie huffs, but says nothing. Ruth can almost see the internal battle waging within her—her refusal as ever to admit there’s anything she can’t do in mortal combat with her detestation of all things church.

“Why don’t you start by telling me what I should be doing with the pedals. Which foot goes on which?”

“Which foot?!” Idgie howls, disbelieving. “Ruth Jamison, you are hopeless! You don’t use both feet!”

“Alright then,” says Ruth, voice satisfied rather than scolded. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

After some remedial lessons in what Idgie calls “the sub-basics” Ruth begins to take them down the road in fits and starts. She’s white knuckled on the steering wheel, and still stalling at regular intervals, but she’s having a good time. It’s frustrating every time she thinks she’s getting the hang of it only to stall again, but she doesn’t care because it feels so good to be doing something, anything, that surprises Idgie—something Idgie thinks she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do.

“You sure ain’t got a lead foot,” Idgie says after Ruth has been cruising for a few minutes without stalling.

“I thought you said there ain’t no fire back home.”

“There ain’t.”

“Then, I’ll have a little less input from the peanut gallery, if it’s all the same to you.”

They drive around for hours, slowly, getting passed by the odd car, until Idgie says they’ll probably need more gas in the tank before too long.

“Alright, hop on out and I’ll take us to a service station.”

“Just tell me where to turn.” Ruth doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “I think I’m getting the hang of this now.”

Idgie concedes silently. They keep trudging slowly down the road. Here and there, Idgie tells Ruth to hang a right or make a left. Before long, they’re at another service station, and Idgie’s got her hands over Ruth’s, guiding the pump into the tank and squeezing the lever to let it flow.

“Let’s hope they like fresh honey here too,” Idgie says before stalking into the station. A little bell over the door tinkles as she opens it.

Since Idgie has stopped pestering Ruth to give up the wheel, Ruth gets back into the passenger seat while Idgie’s inside.

Idgie comes back out with a couple of cans clutched precariously in each hand.

“I should set up as a traveling honey seller,” Idgie informs Ruth. “Got us covered for a bit.” She shakes the tins in each hand before tossing them into the back seat and swinging her legs over the side of the car, her torso following along with the momentum.

“Itinerant life appeal to you?”

Idgie engages the ignition and in a hot minute they are back on the main road. Before long, though, they’re back off again, on dirt roads with trees on either side.

It’s still plenty light out when they pull over.

“I think we’re done our aimless driving for the day. Who knows if we’ll come across more hives.”

Idgie hops out and reaches for the tent, but Ruth stops her with a “Nuh-uh.”

“You got something to say?” Idgie asks, jokingly.

“You’re a menace with that thing,” Ruth nods towards the tent. “You grab the grill and the pot and whatever else you can manage and get us wood and water. I’ll do the tent.”

“You?!” Idgie laughs. “You ain’t nev—“ She stops herself short. “Alright then, suit yourself.”

Idgie’s got a pot of water boiling over a fire when Ruth wipes her hands together and announces that the job is done.

“And this time it ain’t in danger of collapsing on us in the night.”

Idgie doesn’t rise to the bait. “Should have a couple of coffees soon too. Then we can have some beans. Make a nice change from sandwiches.”

“I like both,” Ruth admits. “I like the taste of anything I don’t have to cook thirty times a day.”

Idgie seems to be taking that in.

After they eat it’s still light out, so they head down to the stream and rinse out the pot before they lose the light.

Once they’re back by the tent, they play hand after hand of poker and hearts until Idgie gets sick of it (“No fun when there’s nothing to win”).

* * *

When Ruth and Idgie make it back to the car the next morning, they are greeted by a man kicking their tires.

“Morning ladies,” he says, nodding to them and jamming one thumb into the top of his jeans.

“Morning,” Ruth says.

“Can we help you?” Idgie’s voice presents the words as more challenge than offer.

“Wondering the same thing, myself,” he answers. “Saw the car here pulled over and thought there might have been some trouble,” the stranger elaborates.

“No trouble,” Ruth says, tone cheerful, gracious. “We’re just on our way.”

“Spent the night out here, did you?” he pries.

“Don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Idgie advises.

The man frowns and wrinkles his nose.

“Just being a good Samaritan,” he says, defensively. “Thought someone might’ve been stuck.”

“We ain’t.”

“Thanks all the same,” Ruth says, trying to keep things light and smooth between them and the stranger. “Mighty kind of you to check.”

Idgie and Ruth have dropped their respective burdens into the back seat—Ruth neatly, Idgie in a haphazard pile. They get into the car, but the man is still standing there, facing them, body just in the way enough that Idgie can’t pull away safely.

“Not especially safe, is it?” The man begins, speaking more at the general area than conversing with Ruth and Idgie. “Couple of girls, sleeping rough out here in the woods.”

“Thank you for your concern, but—“

“Then it’s a good thing we ain’t girls,” Idgie interjects. And with a jerk of her right hand she has Julian’s car in reverse. The man, hand resting on the side of the car as though he owns it, jumps back with a start. 

“Jesus H Christ!” he bellows. “You crazy or something?” he demands, but Idgie, shoulder over the back of her seat and head turned behind them, keeps right on reversing and doesn’t answer. Though Idgie is putting distance between the car and the man on the road, Ruth can see his face reddening even as it grows smaller before her eyes. She barks out a laugh, and then another follows, and then another and another. She doesn’t know exactly when, but soon Idgie’s laughs are echoing her own, and then they are mingling together, reverberating around, and then Ruth can’t tell whose are echoing whose.

After driving backwards at speed for a few dozen yards, laughing uproariously as she does, Idgie screeches to a halt. She turns quick as anything to face the road ahead once more. Her left hand goes back to the steering wheel and she slings her left hand around Ruth’s shoulders. The weight around her shoulders feels like the most natural thing in the world. It feels like best friendship. It feels like things should be, like Ruth would always have them, if she could: the two of them against the world, or at least against one chump at a time. Before Ruth can lose herself in the feeling, Idgie gives her a grin like she’s got the devil in her. Ruth matches it. Idgie, arm still around Ruth, slips into second gear, starting forward like a flash and barreling past the man spluttering at the side of the road. 

As they breeze by him, Ruth gets a hold of herself long enough to turn back, hollering over her shoulder and Idgie’s arm, “You know, I think we are,” in response to his question. She dissolves once more into laughter and she just hopes that Idgie can keep control of the car without letting Ruth go, because Ruth’s cheek sets Idgie off again and they’re both in stitches once more.

“You crazy bitch!” the man screams at the retreating car. Ruth doesn’t know if he’s shouting at Idgie or at her, but she finds she doesn’t care. Or, on second thought, she does. She hopes he means her.

* * *

The spirit of laughter carries them through to a podunk little town where they buy some peaches at a roadside stand.

Back in the still-parked car, Ruth bites into one and licks the juice from the corners of her mouth before it can drip down her face. “We in Georgia?” she asks.

“Georgia ain’t got a monopoly on peaches.” Idgie chuckles and takes a huge bite of peach. Juice _does_ drip down her face, but she wipes it away with the back of her hand without a care. “Anyway, I waited long enough to get you out of Georgia,” Idgie appends. “Hardly driving you back there.”

Ruth smiles at Idgie, at the sentiment, as she sucks the yellow flesh from the pit of her peach. Sometimes she still thinks she could live on these—hints and scraps of emotions, brief touches. They feel like validation, like she’s not going round the twist, not imagining things. But they are always too few and far between to be truly sustaining. 

“Who you think he was calling a bitch?” Ruth asks, determinedly keeping her voice smooth as she says the word.

Idgie splutters, and juice and spittle cover the dash. “Ruth Jamison! Well, I never!”

Ruth lifts one shoulder in a coy shrug, as though she’s practiced at cursing and there’s no cause for surprise.

“You think it was you, for reversing the car right out from his big _manly_ grip?” Ruth infuses the word ‘manly’ with as much irony as she can muster. “Or me, for sassing him?”

Idgie chuckles again, “Guess we’ll never know. But we sure showed him…telling us where we can and can’t sleep, scolding us like kids, calling us girls.”

Ruth’s back straightens and her head tilt to one side. “But we _were_ behaving like girls,” Ruth observes. “Hardly worth getting annoyed whenever someone points it out.”

“Can’t let people talk to us like that,” Idgie insists. “We ain’t girls. And besides, he was casting aspersions, the busybody, asking about where we slept and if it was just the two of us.”

“He was a goof alright, but he probably was just checking up—I don’t imagine too many cars get left on the side of the road by the woods all night long.”

“Should keep his nose in his own business, if he doesn’t want to face the wrath of Twanda!” Idgie tries to lighten the mood. 

Ruth shrugs. 

The tension lingers.

They have never, ever talked about it overtly—what Idgie’s clearly worried the chump on the road implied. Ruth had sworn before a judge, a jury, and a courtroom packed with their friends and enemies that she loves Idgie. And she’d meant it. She still does. And, of course, Idgie had followed Ruth to Georgia, she’d left again at Ruth’s request, and come again when Ruth issued an even more desperate countermand. 

But never once since Ruth moved to Whistle Stop with Buddy in the oven have they talked about _why_ Ruth ended up back there. Sure, it’s obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense why she walked out on Frank. But why her pathway out led to Idgie is a subject that Idgie herself steadfastly avoids.

Sometimes when Ruth is giving Idgie a cooking lesson during on a slow afternoon in the Whistle Stop, or when they are laughing together over whiskey and cards, Ruth catches looks from Sipsy. Ruth thinks that Sipsy would listen, if Ruth were to confide in her, even about someone as precious to Sipsy as Idgie is.

But there’s nothing to tell. Nothing but a drunk kiss on the cheek at the edge of a lake nearly half a decade old and seven years of thinking about it. 

* * *

When they’ve next got the tent up and a fire going, Idgie says she’ll go get water from the same stream that’s been keeping them in instant coffees since that first night. 

“Hold on,” Ruth says, “I’m nearly done with the tent, and I’ll come with you. I need a bath, but a rinse in the stream will have to do.”

It’s light as they make their way through the trees. The forest smells good, and they can hear the stream before they see it, rushing unstoppably along its way.

At the end of the stream, Idgie has the pot filled in a flash.

Ruth looks around. Now that’s she’s here on the bank in broad daylight, she’s not so sure about grabbing a wash.

“Think there’re many people around here?”

“Didn’t hear anyone on our way. How come? You hear something?”

“No, just don’t want, you know…” Ruth shrugs and pulls her dress, her favorite one—the green from which she’s tirelessly scrubbed blackberry juice and flour-paste after she and Idgie’d had a food fight in the kitchen—up over her head. “That could use a wash, too.” She lays it out over a mossy rock. It’s cotton, and if she gets it wet, it’ll stay drenched for the rest of the day at least, even in the summer heat.

The forest is quite dense on either side of the stream, but still, Ruth can’t overcome her embarrassment—it’s the middle of the day, and what if some so-and-so does wander along?

“Idgie?” she asks.

“Hm?”

“I’ve got to get clean. I’ve been sweating in the same dress since we left. Will you sort of, you know, keep a lookout?”

“Sure,” Idgie says, pulling up a piece of grass and laying down on the bank as Ruth wades in. When she’s up to her knees, Ruth pulls off her underwear, one leg a time, lifting each one high, out of the water in turn. When she’s naked from the waist down, she quickly wades in further. When she’s up to her waist, she unhooks her bra, then takes a few more steps. She balls up her unmentionables and pitches them, hard as she can, onto the bank. Mercifully, they clear the water, and she gets down to rinsing herself, beginning with her armpits.

“Water’s not too bad,” she calls to Idgie, even though it’s rather cool.

Suddenly, Idgie is up, kicking off her shoes, undoing her belt, and dropping her canvas shorts, hauling off her top and making her way in too.

“Hoo! Liar!” she calls out to Ruth, but playfully.

“Come on, you big baby,” Ruth says, laughing and scrubbing at her stomach and shoulders with the flat of her hands. “It ain’t that bad, for running water. Not too cold to turn up my nose at a wash.”

Ruth cheerfully ignores Idgie’s complaints about the temperature as she finishes rinsing off. When she’s rinsed all but her hair, which is breaded out of her face, pinned around the crown of her head where it’s not causing her any trouble, she gives up. Without soap and truly warm water, she’s not going to get any cleaner. By this point, she’s acclimated to the water, and she keeps wading happily, moving her hands back and forth under the water, letting it move through her fingers, over her skin.

Idgie’s splashing around a little ways away, only up to her thighs.

“You afraid of a little cold water, or something?” Ruth teases as she starts cutting a slow swath through the water back to the bank.

“Who you calling afraid,” Idgie asks. And Ruth can tell that Idgie took the remark as it was intended—a playfully tease. But Idgie never fails to rise to any challenge, even a joke one.

“Just saying,” Ruth replies, making her voice as cool as a cucumber, “that it looks to me like you ain’t up to a little cold water.” With that, Ruth reaches into to the water, makes a scoop with her hand, and splashes Idgie. Most of the water makes contact with her stomach, but some reaches her neck and face.

“Oh, you’re going to regret that,” Idgie warns and starts kicking up her feet, splashing Ruth’s already soaked body.

It may be true that Idgie never met a challenge that she could let slide, but it’s equally true that Ruth never let a challenge from _Idgie_ go unanswered. She starts splashing back with gusto, and before long they are screeching together like two hyenas, just like they have done together so many times during their years of camaraderie.

Both of them try to soak the other, mustering up as much speed and force as they can manage with legs and arms to jettison more, more, more water. Fighting words, all in jest, pass between them whenever they can catch enough breath to form them. In a moment of inspiration, Ruth, whose been trudging closer and closer to Idgie through the water—the better to splash her—lunges at her, throws a hand down on each of Idgie’s shoulders, and forces her under the water, head and all.

She realizes her miscalculation when she finds herself also under the stream from top to toe. They both break the surface a moment later spitting out water.

Before Idgie can retaliate in kind, Ruth high tails it out of the water, kicking up spray in Idgie’s direction with each step.

“I’ll get you for that!” Idgie pledges as she chases Ruth. 

“I’m sure you will,” Ruth says. “Anyway, what was it you said to me once? That I needed _cooling off_? I was just returning the kindness.” Ruth flashes her most impish smile at Idgie, who’s also cleared the water and is shaking out her limbs in an attempt to get dry, as Ruth snatches up her ball of underwear and starts getting them on.

“You better just keep your eyes peeled, Ruth Jamison. I’ll get you back for that one.” Idgie promises again.

“Save yourself the trouble,” Ruth says, feeling her hair with both hands. Her sodden braid is now tangled up with itself and with the rest of her hair. “I’ll be unpinning and detangling this mess until bedtime. And without even a comb,” Ruth laments, sighing.

“That’s what you get for picking fights.” But Idgie is walking towards Ruth. She gestures to Ruth to take a seat on the ground. Ruth does, still fussing with her hair. Idgie sits down next to her and touches Ruth’s hands, a gentle dismissal.

For a few minutes, Idgie roots around in Ruth’s mop of hair, pulling pins out whenever she finds them. All the while, Ruth complains about Idgie’s rough treatment and Idgie tells her not to be such a wimp. “You’re worse than Stump.”

Once Idgie’s got the pins out, she moves on to pulling tangled strands apart. It’s slow work, and Ruth is getting hungry, but she’d have to be perishing ravenous before she’d stop Idgie.

Sitting on the bank with Idgie’s hands in her hair, Ruth thinks about the last time they sat on a water’s edge, just the two of them. Last time, Idgie told Ruth that she always does what she’s supposed to: took care of her father, the preacher, when he took sick, took care of the kids at Sunday school. She hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but she had been dead right. And so had Ruth, when she’d laughed off the implication that she was a doormat and went on, but weeks later, to take Frank’s blows because she thought that meant taking care of her mama, too. Now she takes care of Buddy and the Whistle Stoppers. In fact, Ruth thinks, the only people Ruth hasn’t taken care of are herself and Idgie, who’d never allow anyone to make her feel dependent. But with mama gone to her great reward and Buddy growing up more every day, needing her less and less and demanding Idgie more and more as he tries to find his way through the thicket of boyhood, and with no specter of Frank from which to protect Buddy in any case, Ruth wonders for the first time what it is that should she do for herself.

“You told me I always do what I’m supposed to,” Ruth says, and then hisses when Idgie accidentally rips out some hair.

“You feeling nostalgic or something?” Idgie asks, releasing Ruth’s hair for a moment to gesture to them both, in their underwear, and to the water.

“I guess so. Well, not as such. I always used to know what I was supposed to do. Now I guess I’m trying to decide what that is.”

“What are you talking about?” Idgie asks. “You take care of Buddy, work at the café, lose to me at cards.”

“You sure about that last one?” Ruth asks, coyly. She hasn’t lost a hand to Idgie in years.

“What’s wrong with all that?” Idgie asks, ignoring the sleight against her card sharping.

“Nothing wrong with it,” Ruth admits, feeling a wave of guilt wash over her as she thinks about how ungrateful it would sound to add, ‘It just ain’t enough.’

“Look at me,” Idgie counsels. “I do the same as you, work, take care of Stump, thwack you and Grady and anyone else too big for their breeches at cards. Maybe there’re other things I’m supposed to do, but I ain’t going to do anything I don’t want to.”

And that, Ruth supposes, is the difference between the two of them. Idgie refuses to do what she doesn’t want to, while Ruth so often doesn’t do what she _does_ want. 

“You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you, Idgie?” Ruth asks.

“You’re in some mood, ain’t you?” Idgie answers. “You swallow too much of that water?” A pause. “Ruth, you _know_ I would.”

“Even if it was something you didn’t want to do?” There’s the crux of it—Ruth can’t make Idgie want what she doesn’t. And she doesn’t want to try. What she wants, is to know.

“Ruth, what in the sam hell are you talking about?” Idgie asks, releasing Ruth’s hair and sidling around to sit in front of Ruth where they can see one another.

“Promise me something,” Ruth asks. “Promise me you won’t do anything you don’t want to do just because of me.”

“Is this more about settling down?” Idgie demands, exasperated. “I told you before. You ain’t stopping me from settling down. I ain’t getting anymore settled—“

“That’s just it,” Ruth interrupts and kisses her.

And this time it’s not a quick peck on the cheek. Ruth kisses Idgie on the mouth, though she doesn’t linger. She doesn’t want to overstay any welcome she may have. But she has to know, one way or the other, otherwise she’s going to spend the rest of her life spinning her wheels and carrying a torch, just like Grady.

When Idgie told Ruth that she’s as settled as she ever hopes to be, the words succored Ruth. She still hadn’t been sure at the time if Idgie was involved in Frank’s death somehow, but hearing Idgie say that… Well, Ruth figured, sure, they _were_ fairly settled in their way, after all, and maybe now, since Idgie said it…

But it hadn’t come to be. Not even after Ruth said before God and man that she loves Idgie. Nothing changed between them. Still Idgie comes and goes as she pleases without so much as a ‘back at ten.’ Still Grady flirts with Idgie, day in and day out. Idgie never flirts back of course. Except, Ruth thinks, to Grady’s mind, Idgie’s insults might just be flirtations.

“He’s like a dog with a bone, you know,“ Ruth advised Idgie after a chocolate-frosting-covered Grady ambled out of the café with a look of immensely superior maturity on his face. “He ain’t never going to leave you be unless you put an end to it.”

“He’s got Gladys at home.” Idgie sounded utterly unconcerned, completely non-defensive.

“Right,” Ruth said, “but—“ And she’d cut herself off. She wanted to say, ‘if you tell him you’ve got _me_ at home, he might drop it for good.’ But, Ruth thought, just because _she_ had Idgie, that didn’t mean Idgie had _her_.

Idgie laughs a bit, awkwardly, eyes flitting away from Ruth’s, and it brings Ruth back to the moment, back to what she’s just done—what she can’t undo, and wouldn’t if she could. 

Idgie puts her hand up to her own hair, as though she doesn’t quite know what to do with her appendages.

“Do you want me never to kiss you again?” Ruth asks her, point blank.

Idgie meets Ruth’s eyes again. Idgie’s cheeks are flushed with embarrassment and her pupils are wide. She turns and looks away from Ruth for a few beats, casting her gaze shiftily around the bank in either direction, as well as behind them to the forest, like she’s keeping a lookout.

She turns back to Ruth.

“Don’t say never to me.”

* * *

When they get back to the tent, the fire Idgie’d started is burnt to smoldering embers, and they both set about gathering up more brush wood. Ruth giggles every so often. She’s heard so many women over the years joke about men with swaggers in their steps, winking at one another and dropping hints about what _that_ means in a code they think children can’t decipher.

Idgie’s got a spring in her step as she walks about the clearing, weaving in and out of trees at its edges. And, so help her, Ruth thinks she might too.

After coffees and dinner, it’s dark. 

In the tent, they lie on their backs side by side and make awkward small talk. About Buddy’s next school year coming up in fall, and what he’ll need. About the most recent batches of idiots who’ve come around the café griping about them serving people of color and ‘vagrants.’ Laughter comes even more often to them than usual, but it’s of a wholly different flavor. There’s something new between them. Or something old, something that was alive between them on Ruth’s birthday so many years ago, since buried, and now, against all odds, interred and revived. 

The tension builds with each word they speak to one another, or, more precisely, with each they don’t in favor of keeping to innocuous topics. 

When the frogs and crickets start really getting going, Ruth can’t stand it. She feels like a rubber band pulled to breaking point, and, correspondingly, snaps.

Ruth rolls on her side and faces Idgie. “We just going to pretend it never happened?” she asks, cutting off an anecdote about how well Buddy’s pitching and batting are coming along.

Idgie closes her eyes. “What do you want to talk about it for?”

“To find out what you’re thinking,” Ruth admits. “Do you wish it never happened? Do you want to do it again? I’ve ain’t a mind reader, Idgie.”

“Course I don’t wish that. You were there. You know…” Idgie falters.

“I know I started something,” Ruth agrees. “But I need to know if we finished it back there.”

Idgie suddenly sits up, restless. Her legs are still out before her in the shape of a V, and she’s slouched forward, but meeting Ruth’s eyes. “I don’t know what else I got to do to get it across to you, Ruth. I came and got you from Valdosta, didn’t I? Got a loan to start the café, didn’t I? Support you and Stump, don’t I?”

“And I sit around the Whistle Stop like the Queen of Sheba, do I?” Ruth asks sadly.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I mean… Ruth, you know what I mean. Ever since you moved to Whistle Stop, I’ve been as settled as I ever hoped. And with that—“ She waves towards the trees, in the direction of the stream. “I never thought we’d do that. I didn’t think you’d… you know. What with the Sunday school and the revivals. You’re a preacher’s daughter! I didn’t think…”

Ruth waits for her to finish, but Idgie seems to have said her piece. “Well, now you know.” Ruth steels herself. “And if you say you don’t want to sleep me with again, then that’s that. But Idgie, I ain’t ashamed of loving you. I said it in front of everyone we know after swearing on the Bible! And I meant it. And the only way God figures into this is that he gave me that love.”

Idgie looks surprised. “So what are you saying, exactly?” 

“I’m saying I want to be with you, Idgie. I want to keep going as we are, with Buddy and the café, but I want to go to bed next to you at night and go with you when you disappear sometimes and I don’t want to worry about who knows what we get up to.”

Idgie’s shoulders stiffen and she sits upright. “Don’t care who knows it?! Ruth, if people knew, Grady and the good old boys around town, they’d never let us hear the end of it! I ain’t even sure the café would be safe, or the house. People don’t even like us feeding our neighbors! What do you think they’d say about— about—“

“I don’t care. I’m pretty sure Gladys and Sipsy already think we are anyway. And since when do you care about what Grady or anyone else thinks, anyhow?” Ruth asks, knowing that the _real_ answer is a resounding ‘always,’ but hoping to activate Idgie’s perpetual bravado.

“Who says I care what anyone thinks of me?” Idgie balks. “I’m tired, alright? Let’s get some sleep and tomorrow we can head home.”

And with that, she lies back down, rolls over, positions her hands like a cushion under her head, and doesn’t say another word.

* * *

When Idgie wakes up she says they should hit the road and make their way back, grab a bite to eat along the way.

Ruth’s sleep was a casualty lost to their conversation the night before, though. The upshot is that she was up early enough to start a fire. She’s sipping a poorly stirred coffee and hands Idgie the other one as Idgie puts the fire out.

They drink and pack up in silence. They are heading home. Ruth isn’t sure what that means right now. She has no idea where she stands with Idgie, which actually doesn’t represent much of a change. Only she’s never been less comfortable with it than now, with the phantom of sex haunting them.

* * *

It doesn’t take Idgie much time to find a greasy spoon once they’re back in the car. It’s on a little strip with a couple of empty flower stalls with only tins left out in the age old tradition of the honor system, and a woman selling cured ham. Ruth nods to the woman and smells a few magnolias on her way past. Idgie follows behind her, dragging her feet.

Inside a woman with a stained white apron over a chick yellow dress with a white collar leads them to a table to one side of the counter. 

“I’ll be right back with coffee,” she assures them, and leaves them to peruse their menus.

“Best of both worlds this morning,” Idgie remarks. “Fresh food and you didn’t have to cook it neither. Won’t be as good as what you and George and Sipsy cook up, of course.” Ruth thinks that’s Idgie’s version of a laurel branch. “They don’t have much in the way of specialties—nothing like barbecue or your fried green tomatoes.”

The waitress comes back and fills up their white ceramic mugs with drip coffee. It smells divine.

“You girls need a few more minutes to decide?”

“Not me,” Idgie says. “And If I know her, she’ll have biscuits and gravy with a side of strawberry rhubarb cobbler.”

A man sitting on his own near the window scoffs audibly.

“Got it in one,” Ruth admits. 

“And I’ll have the same, but with cherry pie instead of the cobbler, thank you.” 

“Thank you,” Ruth echoes as Idgie hands the waitress back the paper menus.

“Trying to be gentlemanly now, are you?” Ruth asks, “—ordering for me.”

“I just know what you like.”

“No denying that,” Ruth says, and, in spite of herself, of her uncertainty and her disappointment, she smiles at Idgie. She can’t help herself. Now that she’s laid all her cards on the table and Idgie has, well, if not rejected her, certainly evaded the issue, she doesn’t feel all that different. She supposes that’s because she’s always meant it when she’s said she loves Idgie. Turns out it doesn’t matter if Idgie loves her back, or wants her. Ruth’s heart will go on beating for Idgie Threadgoode just the same.

Idgie reaches across the table to where Ruth’s hands are clasped on the Formica surface. She grabs Ruth’s hands in hers and gives them a squeeze. For a moment or two, they sit like that. 

“Twanda is all-knowing,” Idgie says, finally letting go and leaning back to slump in her chair in a pastiche of unconcern.

Chair legs make an awful screech on the floor as the man by the window pushes himself up from the window and walks out of Ruth’s sightline. 

Idgie looks around to see whether the waitress is in view before pulling the whiskey bottle out of her pocket and pouring the small leftovers of the bottle into her and Ruth’s mugs. “Got no choice but to head back now,” she says, “Whiskey’s gone.”

Ruth chuckles as she stirs some cream and sugar into her mug. “Nearly a proper Irish coffee this time.”

After a few minutes of quiet sipping and listening to Idgie ask what’s taking the chef so damn long (“Doesn’t take you more than a few minutes, and the Whistle Stop is packed!”), Ruth excuses herself. “Going to go and wash my hands before our food gets here.”

“Restrain yourself from taking a bath in the sink,” Idgie calls after her, laughing at her own joke. “We’ll be home by tonight and you can have a proper bath then.” There is warmth in Idgie’s voice and in her eyes, a warmth that Ruth has heard and seen so many times. After she’d married Frank and gone to bed with him, Ruth had started to wonder if there might have been desire behind that warmth. It had taken her less than a week of married life to realize that her own warm, soft feelings about Idgie were loaded with it.

Ruth washes her hands in a cracked but clean porcelain sink and looks at herself in the mirror. Her mother would turn over in her grave if she could see her. She’s in shambles. Her dress is rumpled and her hair looks as wild as Idgie’s. No wonder that fellow by the window had eyed them oddly and scoffed at them. Ruth tugs at her dress ineffectually with her hands and spends a minute or two running her fingers through her hair to get the tangles from yesterday—the ones left over from the stream and them compounded by rolling around with Idgie on the bank—set to rights.

She manages to reduce the rat’s nest to some isolated tangles enough to braid it anew and toss it up to frame her face. It’s hardly her neatest work ever , but it’ll do.

She pushes open the door and starts back toward the table when someone grabs her upper arm painfully. Thoughts of Valdosta, of Frank flood her mind stunning Ruth momentarily as a man’s face appears in front of hers.

“I tell you what,” his voice says, slippery as oil. “You just go and get your _friend_ and head on out of here. We don’t want any trouble around here from people like you.” 

“Excuse me,” Ruth says, regaining her arm with a jerk away from the man as well as her composure. “But my and my _friend_ are here to eat out breakfast same as you. And we’ll be on our way same as you once we’re done.”

“I know you ain’t from around here,” he says, ignoring Ruth’s words. “Never seen you before, but I’ve seen her every now and then, racing around in that car. Don’t know how they let girls run amok where you come from, but around here—“

“Around here what?” Behind the man, Idgie appears.

“Nothing, Idgie.” Ruth is desperate to defuse the situation.

“It ain’t nothing,” the man says. “Bad enough you drive through here like you own the place whenever you feel like it. But the two of you? Don’t you have husbands at home? Kids? Didn’t your mother’s rai—“

“That’s enough now,” Ruth tells him, firmly but evenly. “We’re going to have our breakfast now, then pay up and leave, you understand?”

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?” Idgie asks in solidarity.

“Is there a problem here?” The waitress has returned from the kitchen, carrying a plate of flapjacks.  
“No problem” Ruth says kindly. “Our friend here was just on his way.” Linking arms with Idgie as she passes the waitress and walks them both back to their table. “Unless you count hunger as a problem—we’re dying to try your biscuits.”

“And give him an order on us, would you?” Idgie jerks a thumb at the man who’d accosted Ruth. “You know how men are—nothing but a bunch of babies—grumpy as hell when they get hungry.”

“You just going to stand for two girls like _that_ in here, sassing your customers, fine, upstanding citizens? Where’s the owner?”

The waitress, poor thing, tries to calm the man, informing him that the owner don’t trouble himself with waiting tables. He keeps on ranting even while he’s walking out the door. 

Across their two-chair table Idgie gives a look. Ruth can read it, no trouble at all. It says: _You see_?

Maybe the cobbler’s as good as hers. Maybe the biscuits are perfectly light and flakey, like her mama taught her to make. Maybe the gravy is better than George’s. Ruth doesn’t taste any of it. It’s all so much straw.

They leave a dollar on the table when they’re done and thank the waitress on their way out the door. Ruth adds an apology for the trouble.

“What are you apologizing for?” Idgie asks her once they’re in the car. “You didn’t do nothing.” She turns the key in the ignition, slides into second gear, and they’re pulling out of the dirt parking lot.

“I know,” Ruth says. “But neither did she. You know how awful it is whenever someone runs amok at the café.”

“What was that oaf bothering you for, anyway? Why do these good old boys think it’s up to them to call us girls and nose around in other people’s business.”

“I don’t think he liked the look of us,” Ruth admits, loath though she is to confirm Idgie’s fears. It would be pointless to try and pretend they are groundless. They are so well grounded they’ve got a whole tangled network of root systems.

“What did he say?”

“Don’t matter.” 

“Who says?”

“I do.” Ruth’s voice has an air of finality. What on earth would be the point of repeating what he’d said. Idgie knows what his problem was; she’s scared of it.

“If that waitress hadn’t been there,” Idgie declares. “I’d’ve taught him a lesson.”

Ruth has nothing to say to that. She doesn’t doubt that Idgie would have escalated the situation if Ruth and the waitress hadn’t gotten it in hand. She might have jumped on him, or shoved him, or just given him a vicious tongue lashing. She would have defended Ruth in a heartbeat. Only, she wouldn’t have defended them—Ruth and Idgie—because still, after everything, there just isn’t anything to defend. 

“I’m sorry to have robbed you of a new story for the River Club,” Ruth says, wincing internally at her own passive-aggression. “But I’ve no doubt you can spin it into a tall tale that’ll have Grady and the boys laughing all night and begging you to tell it again.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“You never could resist a good story—spinning stories about Twanda the amazing amazon woman, about your shenanigans. And you’re a born storyteller, too; you’ll never catch me saying you ain’t. But Idgie Threadgoode, you wouldn’t know a bit of honest conversation if it jumped out at you and bit you on the nose.”


	3. Chapter 3

They haven’t even put the diner fully out of their sightline when Idgie slams on the breaks right in the middle of the road.

She turns to look Ruth full in the face. She looks furious, and, for the first time in all the time Ruth’s known her, Ruth feels like it’s her on the business end of it. “You got something you want to say to me?” she demands. “Don’t hold back now.”

“I won’t!” Ruth tells her empathically. “You got a story for everything. Always got something to say about this and that and the other thing, but never a word about what you’re really thinking, about how you’re really feeling. You make such a fuss making fun of everyone in town—teasing Grady, calling out the Reverend Scroggins. And if any man tries to chat you up you give him the hard brush off. And you know what?”

“What?!”

“You give them some lip, some sass answer, make fun of them for looking at you. But you know what I think—”

“I’m sure you’re about to give me an earful of what you think.”

“— _I think_ ,” Ruth goes on, paying Idgie’s interjection no mind, “that you’d rather make fun of them for being interested than admit to yourself that you don’t want no fella. I think you’d rather pretend you ain’t got an ounce of interest in any of it, so that you don’t have to admit you ain’t got the courage to want what you do.”

“Ah!” Idgie screeches, indignant, and hops out of the car, pacing like an angry cat. Ruth’s own hot-headed streak propels her out of the car after Idgie. She slams the door in frustration. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Idgie tells her. “I do what I want to, always have, since after— I always have. It drove mama crazy and now it’s driving you crazy.”

“Idgie, I don’t care what you do. I only care that you ain’t doing what you really want because you’re afraid.”

“I ain’t afraid of nothing.”

“Oh, go sell that line to someone else. I ain’t buying. Sure, you’re the loudest person in the room, the life of the party, but you don’t never say a peep about what’s really going on inside that head, about what your heart wants.”

“And I guess you do, huh?” Idgie asks sarcastically. “You, the preacher’s daughter who never made a single decision for herself in her whole life.”

“I have too! I came to Whistle Stop, didn’t I? You think that was easy? You think I wasn’t terrified that you wouldn’t come when I sent that letter? That Frank wouldn’t let me be? That he’d get his hands on Buddy Jr? Idgie, I was scared stiff! But that’s no way to live.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Idgie shouts. “I came and got you. We have the café. We live together. And yesterday… We can do that again; I said I wanted to, didn’t I? So what do you want, Ruth? You want to walk around Whistle Stop hand in hand? Kiss on the porch where all the busybodies can see and come hassle us about it? Listen to Grady crow about why I wouldn’t never marry him.”

“Yes!” Ruth shrieks, and Idgie takes a step back from her; she’s never seen Ruth in high dudgeon, Ruth realizes. She’s seen Ruth get playfully riled up any number of times, she’s seen her so utterly afraid that the fear has morphed into a cold singularity of purpose, namely protecting Buddy. But Idgie’s never seen Ruth get spitting mad. 

“I don’t got to do any of that to know how I feel about you,” Idgie says once she regains herself. “I don’t need to get all mushy. I don’t need one more reason to hear all about how weird I am, to have people scolding me for luring you away from your _happy_ home, your married life. People already think I murdered Frank. Hell, _you_ think I did it, even though I told you I didn’t.”

“Idgie, you think you’re the only one in the world people gossip about? People say all kinds of things about me and how rotten I was to leave Frank. Sure, some people think you whisked me away, but other people whisper about how I’ve kept you from settling down yourself, how I’m older and ought to be setting a good example, not leading you astray. And, Idgie, I ain’t asking you to have a roll in the hay with me on Whistle Stop’s main street. I only want to know how you feel, what would make you happy.”

“Right now nothing would make me happier than getting back in this car and back home.” 

“Don’t you ignore the question. I hate it when you do that.”

Down the road, the sound of a car approaching can be heard.

“I showed you how I feel yesterday,” Idgie deflects.

“Ha! _I_ threw myself at you, and you still won’t tell me if you liked it, if you want to do it again or if you’re just _willing_ to do it, if you can live without it. I can, you know. I can live without it, Idgie. I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to, but I got to know where I stand with you, one way or the other.” 

The car is getting closer. In her peripheral vision, Ruth can see it getting larger. From its roof, a light starts flashing. Just great.

“I don’t want the whole town talking about me. They’ve already been doing that my whole life: Idgie ruining her sisters’ weddings with her trousers. Idgie breaking her mama’s heart by not settling down. Idgie who looks like a ragamuffin and don’t make the most of herself. Idgie who lured Ruth Jamison away from her husband—broke up that lovely Ruth’s family and ruined her prospects. You want me to prove them all right? We’d never hear the end of it. We’d have to shut down the café, no one would want to be associated with a couple of women who—“

“Now what seems to be the problem here, ladies?”

A car door slams and a police officer is strolling towards them at a leisurely pace, chewing on a piece of long grass. And next to him—and why not, Ruth thinks—is that slippery oaf who grabbed her arm and harassed her in the diner. Now that he’s got powerful company, he’s got his chest puffed out and he’s practically walking on his tip toes with excitement.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Idgie asks, and Ruth winces. So much for honey; Idgie’s all vinegar. “It against the law to argue now?”

“Course it ain’t,” the officer says. “But you’re obstructing the road and disturbing the peace. And my good friend here says you two were bothering the local clientele at Milton’s Diner. So why don’t you start by explaining yourselves. Now.”

“We’re sorry about blocking the road, officer,” Ruth says smoothly, voice contrite. “But you see, my friend here preferred to hop out of the car rather than talk about her feelings.”

“Now I don’t care about—“

“She don’t want to be my lover, you see.”

“Ruth!”

“What did you say?” The officer sounds astonished.

“You see, Burt?! I told you!” yells the oaf, voice triumphant and disgusted all at once

“I threw myself at her, but she don’t want me, you see. Thinks it’s more trouble than it’s worth to be with me.”

“You ought to be careful, missy, making up tales like that. We’re wholesome folk around here, and we don’t want—“

“What are you going to do?” Ruth quotes, “Arrest us? Go on. Arrest me for loving her. You might as well. I’ve already made a silk purse into a sow’s ear.”

The officer approaches Ruth, gets his face right up close to hers, and says, drawling, “You better just think twice before you make jokes about that kind of thing, girl. We got a lot of good people live in this town who don’t want to see or hear about your disgusting—“

Ruth cuts him off with a sharp jab to his chest with her index finger. She’ll admonish herself later for losing her cool; she’s always had a knack for getting rebellious at the worst possible times. “We ain’t,” she says, enunciating every syllable clearly and loudly, “disgusting.”

The officer grabs the hand that poked him and jerks it around. Ruth’s lets out a shout of pain as her whole body moves reflexively to keep her wrist from breaking. Before she knows it, the officer’s got her arm pinned between her back and his torso.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” Idgie screams. The situation deteriorates from there.

* * *

“Never wanted to see you with another shiner.” Idgie’s voice is sad. “It hurt much?”

“Ain’t so bad. Don’t worry about me,” Ruth says from behind the small bag of ice that the officer had grudgingly given her. Through one eye, Ruth can see Idgie slouched against the well-worn wood panels of the jail-cell wall. It’s hardly maximum security—just a tiny sheriff’s station with two cells. Idgie and Ruth are sharing one.

“I can’t sleep at a time like this.” 

“Oh, come on now. If half of your stories have even a kernel of truth then you get in scrapes worse than this every other week.”

“Worse!” shouts Idgie.

“Quiet in there!” orders Burt from the desk where he’s reclining, legs crossed atop its surface.

“Well, sure,” Ruth proceeds, squarely ignoring him. “This will fit in just perfectly with your repertoire of adventure stories. And, lucky me, I get to be a character in this one.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I know that you like your life the way it is, Idgie. Having your adventures, coming and going whenever you please without being answerable to anyone. Getting into all kinds of scrapes like this.” Ruth’s words are entirely in earnest. There is no cruelty in them, no accusation. Only acceptance. Because she loves Idgie like she is; she fell in love with a young woman who pitches baseballs at midnight, who stows away on trains to play Robin Hood, who literally sticks her hand into the bees’ nest to get what she wants. For so long, Ruth has wanted to feel fully like a part of that life, not like some relation, visiting now and again. She doesn’t want to be just another adventure, only exciting when she’s a stick in the mud to be unstuck, a damsel to be rescued, the reason to get a spit-and-rubber bands business going. “You’ve probably been arrested a half a dozen times.”

“As a matter fact, I ain’t. I’ve never been brought in aside from Frank.”

“You’re kidding me.” Ruth drops the ice from her eye, the better to see Idgie. 

“Nope.”

“I’ll be.” Ruth bursts out laughing. 

“Shut up in there!”

* * *

Ruth awakes with a crick in her neck and, she assumes, her hair at a new level of messiness.

She’s quiet in the small cell for a while, watching Idgie drool in the bunk across from hers. 

Eventually, Idgie’s arms stretch out and she lets out a yawn. As she stretches, one arm thwacks into the wall behind her, and the silence is broken. “Ow! Dammit, not enough room in here to swing a cat!”

Footfalls sound on the wooden floor boards, and a sharp rap sounds as Burt hits the bars with his baton.

“You two’ll be quiet, if you know what’s good for you. And if you stay still, keep your mouths shut, and cause no trouble, we’ll bring you a bite to eat for breakfast in a while. Law says we have to.” It sounds as though, in his estimation, the law is far too lenient with degenerate women who have blowout domestics on in the middle of nearly deserted roads.

“How long are you planning on keeping us locked up in here?” Idgie demands, jumping up of the bed, clearly uninterested in sitting still, keeping quiet, or avoiding trouble.

“What are we being charged with, officer?” Ruth asks, more calmly. “We can’t have broken any laws.”

“You two can just shut up and wait. You’re lucky you have any chance of walking today at all. Usually Judge Winston takes Sundays, and he’s a family man—don’t like to deal with any business until church is over and lunch is had. But he’s in Florida on vacation, and Judge Emmet is filling in. He’s a bachelor, so you _might_ just get out of here before nightfall. That’s up to him.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to settle in and wait.” Ruth sounds accepting. 

* * *

Ruth has a glass of water and some toast with margarine sitting on a tray on her lap. Idgie has already scarfed hers down and tossed the tray aside noisily. 

Much as Ruth has long wished to figure more prominently in Idgie’s adventures, she didn’t quite imagine it this way. Arrested over nothing because some oaf did like the way she and Idgie’d looked at one another. Sitting in the jail cell is neither here nor there, but she can’t help but wish they weren’t arrested over this. It sure isn’t going to make anything more straightforward between her and Idgie.

Ruth can hear the main door to the Sheriff’s department open and shut. Idgie’s still sitting on the bed across the way, picking at her fingernails.

Men’s voices, muffled by the walls, can be heard. It’s got to be morning still, though, Ruth thinks. Must be some other poor folks being brought in.

But it isn’t. A few minutes later a man she hasn’t seen before, sharply dressed in a crisp suit, standing tall, walks over to her and Idgie’s cell, accompanied by their arresting officer.

“What have we here?” The judge asks. 

“Couple a no-good reprobates blocking traffic and disturbing the customers around Milton’s.”

“Is that so?” the judge sounds skeptical.

“It ain’t,” Idgie chimes in. “We weren’t disturbing nobody. As you can see, my friend here’s the only one with any marks on her, and she got those in a scuffle with your man there.” Idgie gives Officer Burt a venomous look.

“They attacked me, Your Honor!” Officer Burt says by way of justification. “This one,” he points one finger aggressively at Idgie, “jumped on me. There was a bit of a dust up between us and Harlan Flute—he’s the one that alerted me these two were causing a scene. I don’t know how she got that eye; don’t know who done it.”

“How about you, ma’am?” the judge asks Ruth. “You know how you got that black eye?”

“No, sir.” Ruth prefers the truth whenever possible. “It’s like he said—arms were swinging around—could have been any one of them, even my own.”

The judge looks Ruth up and down. She’s not sure what he makes or her, or Idgie, or of the two of them, grubby, fighting on a public road, under arrest on a Sunday when, by all rights, she should be reading Bible passages with the children in Whistle Stop.

“Why don’t you scram for a minute, Burt?” The judge dismisses the officer, though not without some push-back.

“But, sir—“

“I said scram. You’ve been here all night with these two. Why don’t you grab yourself something to eat while I get to the bottom of this and see about your charges.”

Officer Burt is obviously displeased about being shooed away, but there’s nothing he can do about it. This man is his superior. He dawdles away from the cell. When he’s out of sight the judge asks Ruth again, “You certain you don’t know who blacked your eye, ma’am?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Well, that’s just lucky for Burt, ain’t it,” the judge mumbles. Then, more loudly, “I’m Judge Emmet. I’m here to determine whether the we ought to release you both on bail, or sentence you here and now.”

“Sentence us?” Idgie sounds mutinous. “Officer we ain’t done a damn thing. Everything was fine until your boy’s jackass friend—“

“Idgie,” Ruth says placatingly. “Let me handle this, will you?” Ruth looks Idgie in the eye and tries to communicate: let me see about catching a few flies with honey before you try the vinegar.

“If it’ll be anything like when you handled things with Grady, I can’t wait.” Idgie assumes a relaxed posture, as though she’s settling in for a show. Ruth can feel her cheeks color, but she returns to the task at hand.

“What are we being charged with, Your Honor?” Ruth asks in the demure tones her mother instilled in her as a girl. “We were never made clear on that front.”

“You weren’t, huh? Well, can’t say as I’m surprised. Let’s see now.” Judge Emmet walks over to Officer Burt’s desk, grabs a handful of papers, and begins flipping through. “Obstruction of traffic, disturbing the peace, and obscenity.” Emmet releases a sigh as he finishes the list. He sounds sad. “Obscenity, ladies? Is this so?”

“Who’s that doughy goof calling obscene!” Idgie exclaims.

“Idgie,” Ruth silences her with a quelling tone of measured calm. “Your Honor, I can tell you I’m the daughter of a preacher, and I don’t take oath making lightly. But sir, I swear to you my friend and I haven’t done nothing obscene. I’m awful sorry that we’re here in this cell, and that you had to come up here on a Sunday to sort it out. The officer told us you’re a bachelor sir, but I’m sure your Sunday afternoons are still dear.”

“They are indeed, Mrs…” Emmet looks back down at the papers. “Bennet?” 

“Ms. Jamison, Your Honor, if it’s all the same to you. I’m widowed, and my husband and I were separated well before that in any case.”

“Well, you’re right, Ms. Jamison. I like to golf on a Sunday afternoon.”

“I’m awful sorry about that; I’ll bet it’d be a fine day for golf. My friend and I, we’re neither of us married, you understand, but that don’t mean we don’t like a nice day off on Sunday any less. Matter of fact, that’s how we came to be in this town—taking a few days off.” Ruth wills her words to strike the chords of understanding that she’s aiming to pluck in Judge Emmet. 

Ruth had always minded her mother as a girl. Tied to her apron strings, her father’d said. Ruth couldn’t’ve counted how many times she’d listened in on her mama and friends gossiping about this neighbor or that. Her mama surely thought it was all sailing right over Ruth’s head, but Ruth had picked up the lingo, the euphemisms, the silences, the inflections. She can still hear them in her mind: _lush, loose, easy, spinster, old maid,_ confirmed bachelor. As a girl, Ruth only knew that confirmed bachelors were eligible men who stayed single. It wasn’t until she spent a summer with Idgie and left her behind that Ruth began to grasp the implication behind the raised eyebrows and superior, knowing way that people said it.

She’s betting the farm that she’s sussed out the situation, and that Judge Emmet is following her meaning.

The judge is quiet for a few minutes, seemingly drinking in the two women in front of him, Ruth, who’s praying that she’s not miscalculated, Idgie, who stares right back mulishly at him as he sizes her up.

“So you deny Burt’s allegations of obscenity.”

“Entirely,” Ruth affirms.

“What about obstructing traffic and disturbing the peace?”

“Well,” Ruth says, stretching out the ‘e’ in concession. “It’s true enough that we stopped the car in the middle of the road, Your Honor. But there wasn’t another car around for miles—no one at all. And I’m sure we didn’t disturb the peace, Your Honor. In fact,” Ruth tilts her body a bit so that her biceps is on display for Emmet, “the fella that took off for the officer grabbed me. Sir, it was him that made a scene in that diner. He didn’t like the look of my friend and I, you see.”

“Didn’t he now?” 

“No. He manhandled me and shouted at the poor waitress at that diner, who didn’t put a toe out of place. And that got our emotions running high—my friend and me, you understand? So we had some words between us and that’s when we stopped the car, Your Honor. So as not to drive dangerously.”

“I see,” he says. And, in a slightly lower, amused voice, “Lover’s tiff, huh?” And he honest to goodness winks.

Relief floods through Ruth. “Something like that, Your Honor.”

“I’ll tell you what, Ms. Jamison. Keeping you here is going to make a lot of work for me, and, as you say, I’m not keen on that on a fine Sunday like this. I could still putter around a few holes with the boys if I leave now.”

Ruth says nothing, not wanting to push her luck. She shoots Idgie a look to make sure she’s not about to go and muck things up for them by running her mouth off about goofs playing golf. But Idgie’s smart enough to know when she’s about to get away with, well…not murder...traffic misdemeanor. 

“Seems to me the easiest thing for all concerned is to let you two be on your way. But you can’t be stopping your car any old place that catches your eye. You got that Ms…” Back to the papers. “Threadgoode?”

“She sure does, Your Honor,” Ruth answers deferentially, before Idgie can answer smartly. “We’ll be right on our way; won’t stop until we get home.”

“I thought you looked smart.” Emmet’s tone is full of satisfaction—probably because it’s looking like golf is still on the schedule. “I’ll go find Burt and see if we can’t set you two loose.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. We sure appreciate it.”

* * *

After some muffled words pass between Burt and Emmet in the adjoining room and a petulant foot stamps down on the floor, the two men reappear. Officer Burt makes a slow show of selecting the correct key from a chain of a dozen or so. It’s a pathetic display though, because the ring only holds two long skeleton keys.

Burt’s face is blotchy red with suppressed fury as he hands Idgie the keys to Julian’s car and her wallet. Ruth hadn’t had anything on her to confiscate. Judge Emmet, on the other hand, looks quite pleased. He sees Ruth and Idgie out of the building. He waits, leaning on the doorway as they get into their car, which had been brought to the lot while they were locked up to get it out of the road. From the car Idgie calls out, “Hey! Judge! You’re ever in Whistle Stop, you come by the Whistle Stop café. It’s on us.”

Judge Emmet smiles and nods in acknowledgement. 

As they roll out of the parking lot, Ruth meets his eyes and mouths, “Thank you.” He shakes his head like it’s nothing.

* * *

When they put the cop shop behind them, Idgie looks away from the road over at Ruth. On Idgie’s face, Ruth sees reflected her own grin. 

“Phew!” Idgie calls out with a nervous chuckle. “I thought our goose was cooked for sure with that chump cop, but you sure talked us out of that one.” 

“I seem to have a knack when it comes to handling men of the law,” Ruth agrees, and joins in with Idgie’s laughter.

“You sure handled that judge, alright. Cool as a cucumber.”

Ruth shrugs. “You’d think you’d understand about the honey treatment, you old bee charmer.”

The pet name seems to fill up the lighthearted space between them suddenly with weight.

“I don’t understand you,” Idgie informs Ruth. “I don’t understand how you can call me that out loud, or tell that cop about us, or share winks with that judge. I don’t understand how come it’s so easy for you. You’re practically a bible thumper! You’re supposed to think it’s all obscene, like that dumb cop said.”

“I ain’t saying I’m perfect, Idgie. But I’m the way God made me. If people don’t like it, they can take it up with him.”

* * *

They make it back to Whistle Stop just as the sun is beginning to set. The sky is casting warm, orange light all around.

On their way home, they stop in at Sipsy’s and pick up Buddy, who starts talking a mile a minute, demanding to know what happened to Ruth’s eye and where they’ve been, but precluding any answers by diving into a soliloquy about all the fun he’s gotten up to helping out George with this and that.

“You minded him, didn’t you, Buddy? And Sipsy?”

“Course he did!” “Course I did!” Idgie and Buddy chorus. And Idgie ruffles Buddy’s hair where he’s sitting next to her, scrunched up between the two of them.

Idgie drops Ruth and Buddy at the house and heads off with a “back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!” She’s off to drop the car off with its rightful owner. Ruth expects there’ll have some words, but Julian will forgive her, like he always does. And she’ll do it again, like she always does.

At home, Ruth sends Buddy up for his bath and then tucks him into bed before hopping into the tub herself. 

She’s soaking in hot water that is a troubling shade of grey when a knock comes at the door. “Buddy?” she calls. “That you, son? Give me a minute and I—“

“It’s me,” comes Idgie’s voice. “Stump’s sleeping, I think. Can I come in?”

Idgie watched Ruth give birth to Buddy, and just yesterday the two of them rolled around like teenagers on the bank of some stream, but she’s never asked to come in while Ruth is in the bath before.

“Sure,” Ruth says, because although there’s no precedent, she hasn’t got a thing in the world to keep from Idgie anymore, and not a scrap of shame about what Idgie sees either.

Idgie opens the door and closes it behind her, carefully, quietly. “Don’t want to wake him.” She walks over to the flush toilet that had made mama Threadgoode so house proud when it was installed not long before her death and sits down on the lid, which is never left up, by Ruth’s decree.

Idgie leans forward so that her elbows are resting on her thighs and her forearms are holding up her torso. She’s looking at the floor.

A few minutes of silence pass. “You need something?” Ruth asks. “I really was going to get out soon, if you want the tub.“

“Will you tell me a story?” Idgie requests.

“ _Me_?” Ruth is surprised. “Tall tales are your wheelhouse.”

“Yeah well, tonight I feel like hearing one instead.”

Ruth thinks a moment and pulls one of Idgie’s own stories from her memory. “You know all oysters look alike,” Ruth begins, and Idgie looks up, her face intrigued. “Now anyone looking would think they’re all the same. But one day God decided to make one different. He put a single, tiny spec of sand inside, and—“

“And it turned into a beautiful pearl,” Idgie finishes. “Didn’t think I ever told you that one. Was it Buddy?”

“It was, but not the one you mean. Buddy Jr. told me after you taught him how to bat one-handed.”

* * *

For two weeks after Ruth tells Idgie about the oysters, they don’t talk anymore about what passed between them on their trip. They answer Buddy’s questions about where they were (camping) and what they got up to (eating sandwiches with honey; getting thrown in the slammer—Ruth’s coolness has gone up several notches in his estimation), but Ruth and Idgie go back to how things were before: they work in the diner, joke around with their customers, ask Buddy about what he’s been up to all day, even play cards a few times after dinner. Except Idgie’s away more than she has been since Ruth came to Whistle Stop before she got married to fish Idgie out of her grief.

Ruth still waits up for her when Idgie stays out late, but now as she does so, she thinks this can’t go on. For the first time since she offered to leave to free Idgie back before the trial, Ruth thinks about moving. She starts making loose plans. Her heart is breaking. She doesn’t want to leave behind Sipsy and George, the Threadgoodes, the children in the Sunday school. Most of all, she doesn’t want to leave Idgie behind. But as each day passes, she becomes more certain that she can’t hack this. She thought she could survive on measured contentment, but it turns out she can’t.

She’s sitting in a rocking chair with a book in her lap—she hasn’t even cracked the spine—waiting for Idgie to come home. Then she can tell her that she needs to move. She can thank Idgie for everything: for being a better father to Buddy thank Frank ever could have aspired to, for sharing her home and the café, for taking Ruth on an adventure, for being the best friend Ruth ever, ever had.

The sound of a car stopping pulls Ruth out of her thoughts. And after a few footsteps crunch on the gravel, a sharp noise startles her. 

In a few seconds it comes again, a sort of hollow _tink_. And Ruth can tell this time it’s from the window. She gets up and heads over, on her way the noise comes again—something hitting the upper glass. Ruth sticks her head out of the bottom portion, which is open. Idgie’s outside and they’ll be hell to pay tomorrow, because Julian’s car is parked behind her.

“Come down here a minute,” Idgie beckons. “I want to talk to you.”

Ruth rolls her eyes but abides by Igie’s summons; she heads downstairs and out the door. When she gets outside, Idgie is sitting in the passenger seat of the car. Ruth looks at her quizzically.

“Hop in,” Idgie points to the empty driver’s seat.

“Can’t come inside for a conversation around the kitchen table like a normal person? I brought some of those ribs back from the café, and there’s some slaw.”

“I ain’t,” Idgie says.

“Ain’t what? Hungry? Well, come in and go to bed then. I was waiting up for you, but since—“

“I ain’t normal.”

Ruth sighs in exasperation and gets into the car. “No one’s going to argue with that, Idg—“

“Just wait a minute,” Idgie says, clearly determined to say her piece. “I mean, I ain’t normal. But I ain’t weird either. Just different, I guess, like Buddy told me when I was little—like I told Stump when he was worried about his arm.”

“With the oysters?”

“That’s right.”

“Idgie, I’m glad you feel like a pearl. Real glad, as a matter of fact, because Buddy and I— I think it’s time we were on our way.”

Idgie stares at Ruth for a minute; her face reveals the anguish of someone who can’t make their meaning understood. “What are you talking about?” she asks after a moment, her voice low.

“Talking about moving on. Idgie, you know how I feel. I can’t stay here. I can’t live with you now that we done what we did. Ever since we got back you’ve been taking off more than ever—“

“I’ve been thinking,” Idgie interrupts. 

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me about what.”

The street is quiet but for the sound of cicadas filling up the air between them. Igdie looks Ruth in the eye appraisingly for a while. Finally, she tells her, “You know, I think you’re a lot braver than I ever gave you credit for.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.”

“Braver than me, anyhow, cause I wanted you since Leona’s wedding, but I wasn’t never going to say a thing about it, not like you came right out with it to that goof officer, not like you said in that courtroom.” Idgie confesses. “I wanted to stop you marrying Frank Bennett so you could stay here with me. I wanted to kiss you back that night by the lake. But I know what people say about me; I know what they think about a woman like you hanging around me. I didn’t think I could stand hearing what they’d say about us shacked up. They already think I lured you away from Frank and killed him to make sure I could have you to myself. And after that gump-face, blown up, baboon-assed bastard of a lawyer said it all to my face, in front of everyone… Well, they all think I did it, you know—killed Frank—around here.”

“But we already are shacked up. Anyone who thinks it’s no good already has their mind made up.”

“I don’t want to be on their minds at all. Why can’t everyone just mind their own beeswax?” Idgie pouts like a child.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one. But if you and I could just talk, to each other, you know, about what we’re doing here.” 

“I got a better idea,” Idgie says as Ruth’s chest starts to feel tight. “That’s why I brought the car and got you up in the first place.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that.” Ruth doesn’t dare to feel hopeful.

“How about you take us for a drive?”

Ruth groans. “Come on, Idgie. We just tried that and it didn’t fix a thing.”

“Maybe not. But last time we didn’t have no proper destination.”

“And what’s our proper destination this time around?”

“Thought you could drive us down to the lake.” And just like that a tiny spark lights a flicker of hope in Ruth’s heart. Because there’s only one lake that Idgie could be talking about—only one lake that has any real meaning for them: the scene of the crime from years ago. 

Ruth gives Idgie a sly look. She’s been hoping so long that she doesn’t know if she can stand it one more minute. And yet she can’t stand to let it go. She won’t be the one to let what they could have pass them by, not out of fear. Sure, she doesn’t want to get hurt, but she trusts that God’s given her the strength to stand it, if that’s how things play out, as long she fights for what she thinks—what she’s so sure—could be something so good.

“Come on, Ruth. You drive us this time.” Idgie says, pressing, finally—finally!—pushing back on this. “Unless you think you can’t do it?”

“Only so many times that trick’s going to work on me,” Ruth warns, but adds, because she has to, “alright, Idgie Threadgoode,” and she speaks Idgie’s name like a promise to herself, to them both. “I’ll drive us to the lake just so long as you keep it down with the backseat driving.”

“No deal,” Idgie says, but hands Ruth the keys all the same. 

Ruth turns the key in the ignition, keeping her foot on the clutch. She puts her left hand on the gear stick and before she can grind it into first gear, Idgie puts her hand on top of Ruth’s and gently guides her hand and the stick through the motion of changing gears. Ruth switches from the clutch to the gas and the car begins to roll slowly.

“But I don’t want you to go thinking I’m easy or nothing,” Idgie instructs as Ruth picks up a little speed. “One of these days, Ruth Jamison, I expect you to take me to a proper bed.”

Ruth tries to concentrate on the road and not stalking as she bursts out laughing, because for once, after so many years of waiting, Idgie is applying her infamous bravado to their relationship; Idgie is joking with her about them—about sex!—and even if everything goes belly up, here they are together for now, trying, making a go of it. It reminds Ruth a bit of jumping off that moving train: she did it first, and Idgie followed.

“There’s a promise I’m happy to make,” Ruth says.

“See that you keep it, too,” Idgie says like she’s some slick fat cat making a business deal. “But it’ll have to be in my room,” she adds, “cause I ain’t getting down to business in my mama’s bed.”


End file.
